A Million Little Yesses
“A calling can mean a number of things, can’t it? Is it really something we can quantify, deduce and simplify? Does it really all boil down to a moment, a time and place where we heard a voice or felt a peace or experienced a surge of excitement toward one particular place or people or opportunity? I’ve never been privy to such a thing.”
Some people tell us to follow our dreams. Some say to follow the money. Then there’s the thing about following your heart. And still there’s the one that rings loudest in my ears. Church circles, fellow expats, eager world changers—they’re all saying the same thing: follow your calling. Find the thing, the one thing in all this world that God has made you to do. Then do it, and do it well and with all the certainty of the crystal clear voice of God.
I followed my husband. I followed him following God. And when we stood on a grassy hill on a morning in March, overlooking a gray and glassy lake throwing breadcrumbs to hungry ducks, I said yes to an adventure that was bigger than I could have comprehended. I was—I believed—following God with my yes. A little, trusting yes whispered underneath my breath.
It wasn’t big or grand. I wasn’t overcome by the Spirit in that moment. I didn’t see our life and our future success playout in front of me and I wasn’t overwhelmed with certainty that we would do well overseas.
I didn’t hear God in my ears, telling me what to say and how to say it. But I felt Him near. I felt His steadfast love and His deep knowledge of my life and my future wrap around my heart. I felt a sure and steady ableness to say yes at that moment. I felt a still and quiet peace to accept a life I couldn’t understand at that time. I stepped out onto a bridge covered in fog without being able to see the other side. But I knew who made the bridge, and he holds the whole world in his hands.
It was only recently that I was challenged on this yes. Up until then I’d always received a welcomed “you’re so brave” or a “I could never do that” or “good for you”. But in the midst of a physiological evaluation to join a new organization, the counselor gave me a puzzled and unexpected look when I proudly declared my reason for moving overseas wasn’t in response to a calling directly from God but a choice to follow my husband and his own calling.
“You should ask God for your own,” he said. “You need a calling too, or you won’t last.”
Maybe he was right. Sometimes I’m surprised I’ve lasted this long. I’ll admit I believed our overseas life expectancy to be shorter than this. I thought maybe a couple years and then we’d be back to “normal life”—whatever that means.
But then again, maybe he wasn’t. Because here we are. And here, it seems, we’re remaining.
It’s been five years since I whispered that quiet yes on a mountain in Southern California. And I’ve been saying yes every day since. Sometimes with fear and doubt. Other times with hope and confidence. The days are never the same, but God is.
Sometimes it’s as simple, I guess, as being wholly present right where we are and saying yes to whatever God is putting right in front of us.
Not so much a finish line mentality, but a step-by-step one.
The first yes has good intentions. Has us reaching for and running as fast as we can toward heaven. But the second is humbler, and kinder, perhaps to our tender souls and mortal bodies.
I’m starting to believe that it was as much God’s Spirit in me, enabling me to say yes that brisk day in March, as it was in Peter standing before his accusers, finding the strength to face death for his faith. It is as much the Spirit working in when I say no to my babies' nap time and yes to reaching out to a neighbor as it was when Isaiah said, “Here I am, Lord.”
Because it’s the million little yesses we offer to God that make up the truth of our calling.
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Two years into life overseas and ready to begin our calling, we thought it might be a good idea to start a cafe. We met with some friends who had endured the sticky legal process of starting a new business in our country to ask them some preliminary questions.
“You have to make SURE this is what God is asking you to do,” they begged of us, as they shared their own undeniably undeniable encounter with the voice of God. When it got hard and when they were tempted to turn their back and throw towels out with the coffee grounds, they rested their hope on the calling, on the word from the Lord.
People say that with such finality: a word from the Lord. A calling. An encounter. Call it what you want, but what I sometimes hear is something that I dare not dispute or question. It often moves me to confusion that my own life doesn’t have a clear mission statement other than love God and love people, wherever you are.
What if I just know I like coffee, I know how to make a decent loaf of bread, and want to do something for the Lord with what I have and know how to do?
Those friends left. They went back to America. I don’t believe their calling ran empty. I don’t want to believe they heard wrong or misplaced their hope.
A few things I do know—His ways are higher than our ways. His thoughts are higher than our thoughts. He works all things together for the good of those who love Him. And here’s what I think: sometimes it’s easier to force a calling on our lives than submit to the mysterious and wonderful ways God can work in the everyday moments of our lives.
Yes, He may have commanded plainly to open a cafe and He is still good when our friends were left wondering why they’d done it all and endured so many long days if it would all end.
And yes, He is here, calling me day by day into His presence and His plan even though I have yet to receive my own grand, dark-night-of-the-soul style calling to overseas life.
What if the honest answer for why I came overseas was that I’d fallen in love with a boy when my own plans for a future had fallen apart, leaving a wonderful blank space and open heart to say yes to such an adventure?
The truth is, it isn’t my strength or the depth of my conviction or the bravery of following my husband that’s kept us here—it’s circumstance. At times, I’ve called it God but, let’s not over exaggerate circumstances. Let’s instead humbly observe the powerful way a big God uses small yesses—brave in their very own way—to orchestrate the days of our lives for His glory’s sake. And our good.
When you say yes to getting out of bed and facing the day with joy and patience after a long, sleepless night.
When you say yes to engaging with a local, even though your brain is tired and language is lacking.
When you say yes to someone popping in, even though you don’t have anything prepared and a million things to do.
When you say yes to remaining, even when everyone else is leaving.
When you say yes to trusting in God’s provision, even though your visa days are running low.
When you say yes to leaving, even though staying sounds better in a newsletter.
I’ve been honest, these days. For some reason or other, the question comes up a number of times since that fateful conversation with the puzzled counselor. “Why did you come to Nepal?” people ask.
“I’m still figuring that out…” I say. Or even, “My husband wanted to and I thought it seemed like a fine idea.”
While I wish the answer would come in big writing in the sky or in some miraculous moment, I’m finding it comes little by little, in the small, unassuming moments that so often pass by unnoticed.
A calling can mean a number of things, can’t it? Is it really something we can quantify, deduce and simplify? Does it really all boil down to a moment, a time and place where we heard a voice or felt a peace or experienced a surge of excitement toward one particular place or people or opportunity? I’ve never been privy to such a thing.
But I’m starting to ask for it. Even writing this.
This is my ask, God. Here I am, send me. Everyday, send me to do Your work and share Your story. Help me say yes even when it’s hard. Help me to be curious about You and what You’re doing each moment. Move my heart to deep and true certainty that right where we are is right where we’re meant to be.
It’s hard to be here sometimes. Would You call me? Would You show me why and help me to understand? Would You move my heart in a way that knows with deep and true certainty that this is where You have us and You would have us be nowhere else?
Amen.