I have a bone to pick with Disney and golden books and all the other fairy tale advocates or promoters I should say. For so many of the Hallmark movie makers and even all too many ROM coms. As a child born in the West or in America, however you want to say it, I was raised with fairy tales. So many great Once Upon a times that only highlight key pivotal amazing moments and happy endings. Sure, every fairy tale has its drama, villains, or problems that happen but there is always the resolution and good winning the day.  Every piece of the story are big moments in the characters life played out for our enjoyment.  They don’t highlight the everyday mundane tasks and chores and there is always a happy ending. It gives us this idea that life should be that way, or we want it to that way. We live, holding our breath until the next big moment and everything in between it’s just wasted space. We lose something, well we lose everything when we live that way, and we miss the point of life thanks to unrealistic expectations and an idea that our life can be the fairy tale existence.  That doesn’t mean that life will be a nightmare either but maybe there is a truth somewhere in-between.  

I would argue, like many have before me, that life is not the big moments but it’s everything in between. Yet because I was raised with this idea of it’s not a great story unless it’s got all these highlights you start to think that your everyday life is not really a great story or a great life really. You get disenchanted with the everyday and that’s really sad because probably 75% of our life is every day. It’s the moments of cleaning the dishes, folding the laundry and putting it away, relaxing on the couch either reading or watching a TV show with your family. It’s laboring over the dinner, eating the meal with your family, and then debating over who’s going to clean the dishes.  It’s sitting in meetings at work, and paying bills, buying groceries and planning for living. For every person, the everyday looks a little different because we are all a little different. It depends on if you’re a kid and going to school or if you’re a younger adult without a family or even an older adult without a family versus an adult with a family. For some you’re an older adult that has an empty nest or an older adult that’s retired. We all have a different every day. Yet there are so many similarities in our lives – obligations to fulfil, responsibilities to complete, tasks to maintain, chores to tend to, a mind to keep active and growing, health concerns and maintenance, etc. I could go on and on because the list of similarities goes on and on. The issue is that we keep getting fed this message that we’re supposed to be this great something with all the giant moments. This idea leaves us dissatisfied with our current mundane, real-life existence.

We do the same thing with our faith. We only look at the highlights of our walk with the Lord as important. The moment we were saved, the healings that we have received, or the great breakthroughs that have happened in our spiritual life, on our journey. We don’t get that our spiritual life is really all the in between moments. It’s the daily maintenance and care for your soul.  When you pray and read God’s word in private and together.  And yes, there should be more on your own then together.  It’s the fellowship that you share with your fellow believers learning God’s word and serving each other, bearing each other burdens as the bible instructs.   It’s the acts of love and kindness that you show to shine God’s light in our dark world. It’s all of those moments mostly unseen, but sometimes seen. It’s also the moments when we cry out to God in desperation because we just don’t understand or don’t know how to keep going. Every single one of those small moments is what, put together, is the sum of our spiritual life. If you keep waiting for the big moment you miss living, you’ve missed the point.

The reason why I personally have a bone to pick with fairy tales is this attitude has created a sense of discontentment in me with my life when I shouldn’t be discontent. Partially because I feel like this moment should be more than it is. How can I be pleasing to God sitting in my room on my own offering nothing to anyone in the world? Is that a waste of time? Everyone else would see this as a complete waste, no one is benefiting at that moment, or are they? I am, in this moment growing closer to God and I matter to him, so this is not a wasted moment. The point of life is to continue to love and learn and grow and give and go and however that is happening whether it is in those moments we’re doing the little, tiny things that make up the majority of our life or in those gigantic/seen moments, all of that is still being accomplished. We shouldn’t diminish the small things or feel discontent because it’s not a big moment or because I’m only benefiting my own spiritual life. You see, in all those moments we’re still accomplishing the point, the purpose, and the reason we are here. The truth is our spiritual lives are a journey to one target, God. It’s not about service, it’s not about how much I give or go, it’s not about how much I deserve through actions or works, and it’s not about me or what I’m doing at all. It is all about our relationship with God. The only point is reaching God’s heart, knowing him more, being in relationship with him.  

Nurturing that relationship cannot only be done with big moments but it has to be done in the everyday. It is not a waste to sit still alone in God’s presence and breathe him in. When I play my piano by myself and worship the Lord with no one watching, I’m not wasting the talents God gave me. No, I’m lavishing them on him. I don’t know where we got this idea that unless we are considered great saints or unless what we do is benefiting others immediately than we aren’t making any kind of a difference. That’s just a lie pure and simple that Satan uses to burn out believers through guilt of not doing enough, or at least not realizing their first and only work is to have and nurture the relationship with the Lord. 

Yes, there are big names you read the Bible but there are so many others probably never mentioned, and not remembered by anyone but God. They made a difference too.  It’s enough that God alone knows our name.  It is enough that we are lavishing our love on God in hidden places, that is building our bond with him.  Even Jesus did this, he went away for quiet time with God. He showed us by example that you cannot give, go, serve, without that time alone.  That study and prayer are just as important as proclaiming.  All moments, seen and unseen are still our life and have equal value.

We’ll probably all have a moment in the faith where we get to do something great and there’s recognition, we just must be really careful because that’s not the point. First of all, the recognition needs to be turned around to the person who needs to be glorified and should be glorified, which is God and God alone. Secondly, the recognition that we should be seeking is in our relationship with God. Most of it’s not going to come in the giant moments with the lights and the fireworks and big breakthroughs, it’s going to come in all the small, amazing ways that he works in our life every day. In the way so many days the devotion I read was just the one I needed. Or like how there are so many days when I have that friend to call when I don’t know even how to express what I’m feeling yet Jesus is there with me supporting me and reminding me I’m not alone through the love and support of friends. Through the glorious nature around me when I’ve realized that God made that knowing that I would see that that day, that he did that just for me for that tiny moment that no one else in the world cares about. No moment or thing is insignificant in God’s eyes.

This world and society promote seeking acclaim and recognition at all costs. They say strive for excellence but really what they mean is stand out, so everyone sees you because it’s only real and legitimate if you recognized for it. That’s not God’s philosophy. The world and society will tell you that we work all those little moments because we want to get the big moments, the great moments, but that’s not what God would want for us either. He wants every moment in the here and now to be a moment that we utilize to get closer to him. Notice I didn’t say that it was about serving or giving or going it’s about building your relationship with God. Out of the outflow of that sometimes there are opportunities to give and to go and to serve and to love but if you don’t have that foundation of a relationship with him, what are you giving and going and serving and loving from? 

The world would have us think that you must have the happy ending and that can be accomplished by many the happy moment and not all the others normal mundane times. We know the truth is we have a happy ending; we’ve been promised the victory and eternal peace and joy and hope and love and a home beyond any castle Disney ever could have conceived of drawing. However, we also know because of God’s word that in this world we will have trouble, but we are to take heart because God has overcome the world. 

That means in my every day as I’m nurturing my relationship with God, I’m going to face difficulties, I’m going to face pain, I’m going to experience loss and grief, and I am going to have an actual life. Not those made-up stories, highlight reels, or fairy tales where you ride off into the sunset.  We know that wasn’t really the end. We live knowing that real life stories are gritty and dirty and long, but there’s such a beauty in the struggle and in the triumphing over every obstacle. In the knowing that our hope was never that every single moment would be a great moment, that every single moment would be recognized by everyone in the world, or that every single moment would be easy and trouble free.  No, our hope was in knowing that we have that relationship with God to carry us and sustain us until we receive the promise of the happy ending, the true happy ending we know will come. 

So, in light of this, I suppose I should stop waiting for my life to be a Disney movie and just instead live every moment taking full opportunity of that moment I’m in. Not expecting that moment to be anything other than what it is, a moment that I have been given breath and a chance to be. A moment I can learn and live and grow and give and sometimes go. A moment that no matter what it looks like I can be content in because I understand, and the gravity of that small moment is just as important as the moment of a mountain top experience. Whether I’m cleaning the dishes, sitting in a lady’s group studying the Bible, in my car all by myself singing music, laying in my bed journaling, whether anyone in the world sees me or knows me in that moment I know one person who does, and He is the only person that matters. That moment is special, unique, and wonderful, whether it is great or hidden and not seen.  Because He sees it all every one of the moments and loves me/values me the same in each.  Why should I view them any differently?