Less is more
“Dear Taylor, I greet you in the name of Christ, our weather is cold. thanks a lot for the gift you sent to me i got it, i bought two goats am thanking you more. my birthday went so well… read in psalms 125:1.”
The words inundate the hollow inside me and, spilling over I clasp hands over lips wondering what I ever did to be trusted. Trusted with a small, beating heart I’ve never held before. In an unnamed field in Rwanda a girl with black skin and a contagious smile kicks a soccer ball and spins the spokes of a broken wheel, as I sip lattes in a Starbucks in white America and circle around the same sun. And I’ll sell yoga pants and eavesdrop on the thoughts of coworkers reminding themselves that they’re intelligent and made for more, as if more connotes a pay raise or a job title or a minute adjustment in stature.
More is on the knees and always has been, hiding in the humility of broken things.
I sent twenty bucks and you bought two goats, I thought. You have real needs, I thought, ignorance shining bright.
I’ll set the letter down and eat my third square meal of the day and forget in a moment what I read until tomorrow when I pick it up again.
“A song of ascents. Those who trust in the LORD are like Mount Zion, which cannot be shaken but endures forever,” Psalm 125:1.
And I’ll read her words and fill up, pour out and go about life enveloped in the knowledge that she is richer than I am in the best sense of the word, un-poisoned by the cataclysmic temptation of wanting everything that doesn’t matter. She writes that her dad’s her favorite hero, and I think, do I have one? Not a hero, but the type of admiration that keeps a dad sinless in his daughter’s eyes? Hard truth barrels through the bars around my heart. Words doing their job, putting out fires, that’s all.
With it I notice how life has been holding me upside down lately, shaking my pockets out for anything I might have left in me. Yet it cannot reach this deep-seated space within, a spiritual greenhouse growing wild that never seems to die, forcing right brain blossoms to peep passionately, relentlessly through blue eyes, always. And the thief that came to steal becomes threatened by this divine resolve, sets me down and runs.
I hold for a moment God’s brilliance, like gold flecks of sunlight on a day’s end, right there in my palms as I read the words from my little sponsor girl. And I feel tied to her by an unbreakable thread of love. The girl reminds me of me at different times, innocent and undistracted, and it makes me want to unlearn growing up. I, like her, just want people to love and food to eat and things to take care of, maybe. But it’s hard for moments to hold sweet meaning when we’re constantly climbing, constantly tugging at the pant legs of those whom we want to be tomorrow, and we get to the top only to realize we’ve been fooled.
The good stuff’s at the bottom, on the ground, treasure covered in the dirt.
J writes that she has a best friend named Esperance — french for Hope — and I think of the irony as my friend Hope and I crowd the kitchen, draining spaghetti and tossing salad for dinner. She and I will sit around a fire as I call her Espie, like I thought of it on my own when really it was delivered, sent as a reminder that God is always connecting the details, always orchestrating stories that are fun to tell. Time will steadily slow till midnight as I watch the mouths of laughing friends and stare for a second too long into their eyes looking for a sign that they’re in there, doing alright. I’ll notice the glow of the trees wrapped tightly with twinkling lights. I want to jar the moment the way kids do fireflies, watch in awe the steady blinks of illumination, a pattern suggestive of how it feels to weather the storms of life.
I want to give more joy forward, more resources, more grace to cover sin. I want more of God and what I’ve already got, want to cut back all of the pesky weeds growing in my ears and my eyes and my mouth and competing for room in my heart.
All prompted by a letter from a little girl.
There are drawings on the edge of the paper, one of a bird, another of a few square boxes labeled “furniture,” and I think now about how I need a new mattress and wonder if she has one at all.
I want to care about what matters and nothing else.
To God be the Glory,
Taylor
