My Loaves and Fishes

I went on a walk yesterday. It was the first time in a long time that I had been on one of my “power-walking-worship-music-reflective-prayer” walks. And I loved it! And God showed me a picture of my life right now.

For those of you who have been following our story, we’ve been attempting to move into the north part of our city. My husband had really felt like God had led him/us to move into that part of the city over a year ago; however, I was pregnant at the time and asked for a season of calm and minimal changes until after the baby was born. This last November (after our baby was born), my husband again felt a re-awakening to pursue that leading to move up there. I simply want us to be obedient. And while I do not have as specific a leading as my husband does, I do feel strongly that I want us to live a life of obedience to God. For me, that means that if either one of us feels like God is leading us into something, then I want us to do that thing.

As a result of that whole journey, we’ve been focusing our life in the north part of the city. We are committed to and becoming involved in a church in the north part of the city. We looked for houses up there. And we found one we love. And we put an offer on it. And the sellers accepted. And now we are waiting…waiting…waiting. The seller’s bank still has to agree to our price. And it takes banks a l-o-n-g time to do this apparently.

In the meantime, I feel like we keep hitting walls where we just can’t go further in the things God has asked us to do. Our oldest son (22 months), still does not go into childcare for more than 15 minutes at a time. This limits my involvement in any “formal” ministry. We live in a two bedroom condo in midtown, which means we aren’t actually present in the north part of the city yet. This also means we don’t have the space to host lots of people in our home at one time nor late in the evening since our sons room shares a wall with the living room. Our baby was in our room and was waking up way too often at night (due to us most likely waking him up first); however, we don’t have another room to put him in. All these things have a way of making me feel hopeless, as though we just can’t do more with our lives…that it is almost impossible to do “ministry.”

God keeps breaking through those walls and taking us further than we could imagine given our limitations right now. These limitations are not necessarily disappearing; rather, God is working through the limitations. Because my husband’s job has an abnormal schedule, he is actually able to be home two Monday mornings a month. This means that he can be with our boys on those Mondays, allowing me to teach at a women’s Bible study those two Monday mornings each month.

While we aren’t present in the north part of the city yet, we are learning how to care about our neighbors right now where we are. Really being in relationship with neighbors is a brand new reality for me and something that is taking some growth on my part. It would be silly to wait to start this learning process until we’ve moved to our focus neighborhood.

And although our condo is small, we still have enough room to have some people over. And even though, it’s too noisy in such a small space to have people over after “bedtime,” we have discovered that late afternoon/early evening on the weekend is a great time to have people over. We even found a small space in the condo for our littlest man to sleep so that we don’t wake him up as much (which means he’s not waking us up as much either!).

So often right now, I feel like I have so very little to offer to God. I feel like what’s available in me for Him to use is almost too small to really be used. Sometimes I get stuck in the “when we have a house, then we will…” or “when the boys are able to go into childcare, then I can…” or “when we are finally sleeping through the night, then we’ll have energy to…” or “when we finally move into that neighborhood, then we can…” mentality.

What God was showing me last night on my walk was that He is already working right now with what I have to offer Him. It was last night that He reminded me of the boys’ lunch of loaves and fishes that Jesus was able to use to feed thousands. This gave me a fresh perspective. What I have to offer to God may be small; however, He is able to do whatever He desires with what I have. He is not surprised by the “smallness” of my life right now. Nor is He surprised that we haven’t moved into our house yet. He is not demanding that I come up with something great on my own with which to engage in His Kingdom. Rather, He is simply asking me to consider what I do have and offer that to Him. He then will take it and use it for His purposes and His glory. He is simply asking for my “loaves and fishes” not for me to figure out how to feed the thousands on my own.