Sometimes you have to feel small in order to realize your own importance
If you’re anything like me, you have your good days and your bad days. Days when you feel like things are going well, and others when no matter what you do, nothing seems to quite work out.
And if you’re like me, when all you’ve been doing is GO, GO, GO, emotions can run a bit fragile.
So here I am, after the busyness of the holiday season, finally able to catch my breath at work. The New Year’s holiday weekend provided a sanctuary of sorts – a 4-day weekend where work’s demands were very little, and family time was high.
The new year is one of those seasons where, for me, I get rejuvenated with new ideas, fresh approaches to grow my business, fun ways to connect as a family.
I typically start the week after New Year’s trying some of these things out.
And invariably, a number of them fall flat.
Not because I’m a failure, but because probability states that we’re never going to hit it out of the park 100% of the time.
But does my mind go to probability in those moments?
Nope. My mind goes straight to failure, that ever-damning word that plagues us all and creeps up when we least expect it.
Failure as a dad.
Failure as a husband.
Failure as a writer, as a coffee entrepreneur, as a friend, or anything else I could possibly try my hand at.
I recognize that these, for the most part, are lies, but I tend to believe them anyways.
Especially when I’m tired, worn-out, and running on fumes.
That confluence of physical, emotional, and spiritual fatigue can make a person feel very unsuccessful, very inadequate, very… small.
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We’re about to leave on a family trip to Southern Utah. It’s a tradition of ours to head out for a family winter vacation, enjoying the solitude, the large skies, and the snow.
One of our traditions on family vacations is to unplug completely. We call it a “no-screens” rule – for my children, this means no video games. For me, it means no work.
No work removes any sense of self-accomplishment from my day. It requires that I do nothing to “move the ball forward”, as they say, and instead forces me to be in the moment, present with my family, present with my surroundings, and present with a slower pace of living.
It would be natural for a person to feel small in that state. For as a man, I can tend to place quite a bit of my self-worth on what I’m building, what I’m accomplishing, what I’m doing.
And for the first day or so, I do feel small.
And yet in that same moment I also feel free.
Free to exhale; free to rest in my position as God’s beloved.
For we are all God’s beloved, and would do well to be reminded of this from time to time.
Not Social Media’s beloved, not my Customers’ beloved, not my Bank Account’s beloved, but God’s beloved.
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There is a cross-country trail we ski every time we do this trip. The trail winds through forests and snow-covered meadows, ultimately paralleling the immense drop-off that is Bryce Canyon.
Every time we go, I find myself standing on the rim, ski poles in hand, inhaling the silence of the vast land to the east.
As I breathe in the slow, expansive beauty, my eyes wander to far-off horizons. Horizons where nothing is present except for the breath of God on nature’s landscape.
In that moment, I am acutely aware of just how small I truly am.
And yet those moments bring me back to the one thing I know to be true: that the Creator who made this vast beauty replete with variety, color, contrast, and magnificence – that same Creator sees humankind as his true masterpiece.
As I allow this reality to wash over me, a peace begins to permeate.
It’s a peace that comes from knowing, deep down inside, that a moment such as this is one of being reminded of my identity.
That in those moments when I feel so very small, I can slowly exhale, knowing that the God who made beauty simply because he could, also decided to impart value and worth to his children simply because of who they are, not because of what they have accomplished.
And that’s a smallness I’ll embrace every single time…