“Wow,” our guest marveled. “Just one look, that’s all she needed.”
It was true.
Amidst cleaning, cooking and hosting our guests over the busy end-of-year season, our baby Sarah-Faith’s curious eyes would roam the world but always returned to the same place. Just one look from Mama, and her eyes and smile would pop the room up with a thousand lights and a squeal of fireworks.
It reminded me, that I didn’t need to strive more to do better to be her Mama. I already was, and all I needed, was not to cook more, clean more, buy more, but just to stop, wait and watch the world go by as peals of her laughter bounced down the hallway like rainbow-colored balloons.
Doing less, is so often, doing more.
During my Masters program, I often got asked, “How do you do this- be a mom and study? This program is crazy.”
A friend told me, “Sabbath is impossible here. Rest a day, and the snowball effect of work just kills ya.”
Not wanting to be left behind, I too had raced to the rhythm of that frantic beat.
When I first felt called to start a social venture to help those in need, the whirlwind of work intensified: I knocked on doors between lectures, carried my baby in and out of seminars, nursed her in office and restrooms, listened to audios while cooking, pumping and cleaning. Life was filled to the brim.
Yet, as time passed, I realized I was walking in circles. Amidst the maddening mayhem, I had no idea what the social venture stood for, what its goals or my vision was.
One afternoon, from sheer exhaustion, my husband found me in tears of discouragement.
“It’s no use,” I said. “It’s all been a mistake.”
That weekend, while listening to a sermon about the Tower of Babel, God gripped me like a fierce hug and caught my attention. I realized, that like the people building the tower which crumbled, I too had been building my own tower based on self-striving. At the end of the sermon, a bizarre event happened- as the message described the Day of Pentecost as an event of restoration, I saw a vision of the books traveling to different parts of the world, to people of different tongues.
I almost said aloud, “How can this be? The books are in English.”
But something in me changed that day. I stopped striving, running, being busy. Instead of working through weekends trying to set up the social venture and staying on top of my work, I started spending an entire full day a week in prayer instead.
It didn’t make sense, there was so much to do. But I knew it was the change I needed.
It reminded me of Labor- that the closer I got to actually delivering Sarah-Faith into the world, the less fanfare there was. In the preceding ten months, I had exercised, seen doctors, done tests, and at the last stretch, there I was on my hands and knees, single minded and focused in prayer, on the one thing that had to be done.
There was no flailing, no fancy drugs, no equipment at our home birth. From a posture of rest, came the most miraculous event of all.
Doing less, can be so much more.
Since then, doing less, a wave of events have happened. A few days later, a stranger who lived ten thousand miles from me wrote to me to say she had, for years, been wanting to translate my books but could not find the courage to contact me. That weekend, she said God gave her a burden so heavy that she had no choice but to write to me, and offered to translate my books into Japanese and Tetum (the language of East Timor where the tsunami devastated thousands), to bless those who were in need. Just like in the vision.
Sundays in prayer, became a necessity.
More happened in the following weeks than all of the preceding months.
A week later, two other people voluntarily offered to translate my books into mandarin. I declined at first, explaining that my publisher had declined before. But they persisted.
In a strange irresistible momentum of events, my publisher contacted me one morning, and said, “Our publishing house in China is very interested. Send me the translations and we’ll get this done. Also your Japanese and Tetum translations, and a few other languages.”
Part of me used to scoff when people told me, that prayer is the work. It sounded cliched, but now, it became reality.
I prayed for help- a team to start Kitesong Global as a ministry, and specifically for a millennial to help me with a website.
Two weeks later, a Singaporean man I was connected to in Baltimore met me for lunch. I had expected a middle aged uncle sort of figure. Instead, he turned out to be a 24-year old arts student, who then told me directly, “I saw your website. I’m a graphic designer. I feel God led me to you because He wants me to do your website for you. I won’t charge you a cent. I’ve been wanting to do something meaningful like this for a long time.”
That very afternoon, a serendipitous bump along the corridor with a stranger at school turned into an unexpected opportunity. Approaching me, he said, “Your classmate told me about what you’re doing- I want to record your story, I’m a videographer. Can I help?”
I was speechless.
That same week, I had been praying for an opportunity to launch Kitesong as a venture while celebrating Sarah-Faith’s birthday but had little idea how to make it happen. I asked my program director if perhaps I could do a personal sharing in a small classroom. The next day, I was informed by the program office’s staff that instead of a small classroom, they had booked … the largest function hall at school and had emailed other committees not to organize any other clashing events- they wanted it to be an official school-wide event.
Within a few weeks, God had provided everything for His purposes, once I had let go to let Him. What is impossible to man, becomes possible when we stop intervening with God’s timing and ways.
As the last year came to a close, I began to ponder upon the gift of restedness and the simplicity of being present that God truly intends for each of us.
And as I did, I saw Sarah-Faith crawling out of the kitchen squealing with incandescent delight- for in her hand, was her great prize: a bulb of garlic. So thrilled was she with her bulb that she clutched it everywhere she went, showing her newly budded pearly whites at her new prize.
But how that smile burst into fireworks when she caught my glance.
Truly, what a child needs isn’t fancier toys, electronic gadgets or expensive daycare programs. All she needed was my simple, inexpensive presence, a love-filled, present-moment look, a warm and enveloping hug.
Our simple presence and trusting faith are what delights not only our children, but our Father too.
Doing less, truly is doing more.
So as we cross into another year and give thanks to God for all He has done in 2017, let us remember these gems of greater simplicity, simpler faith and faithful trust.
For truly, prayer is the work that we all want done. It is the work and so much more.
