Five boys.  Ten fingers, ten toes on each.  One hundred nails clipped on a regular basis for over a decade.  Thankfully, since they’re all a couple years apart, not all five have needed every set of twenty done at once.  Whew!  The older boys are able to do this for themselves now, and the wonderful habit of nail-biting has significantly reduced my efforts with the middle two.  However, one of the funniest things that has ever come out of my son’s mouth happened when he was just three-years-old and I was clipping his toenails, and it has made every past and future nail-clipping session completely worth it!

If you know my second-oldest, Graham, you know he loves to talk.  Confidently, passionately, and to no end.  The kid has an unlimited word quota for each day, and every day it seems his goal is to surpass yesterday’s record.  That is the only reason I can gather for how and why a person could jabber incessantly with unmatched animation.  Graham’s been talking like this since before he was two.  Which means, I should’ve seen this coming.  On the upside, he’s hilarious, and I get to share with you one of my all-time favorite laughs.

Sitting on the counter with his little three-year-old, bruise-covered legs stretched out, feet suspended above our plain white, kitchen trash below, I began clipping one toenail at a time on Graham’s tiny foot.  We would always start with the big toe, because it was the easiest.  There’s enough nail there to actually clip straight across, and it doesn’t grow in thickness instead of length, as well as curved into the sides of the toe, like Graham’s pinky toes do. Like most of my children’s nails do.  (They can thank their mother for that lovely physical trait!)  As I worked my way closer to his very last toe, I could feel Graham’s body next to mine tense up as his anticipation built, and he exclaimed, “Careful on the tiniest toe ever!!! The tiniest toe is not the bravest!!!”

Now, at the risk of comparing myself too much to a toddler’s dirty toe, I will just say this:  I know the feeling – to feel tiny and not brave. Small and insignificant, ridiculously inadequate and extremely foolish.  Honestly, sometimes I don’t even want to be brave.   

Anyone else? 

Well, if you can relate, my hope is that what God reminded me of lately will encourage you, too. 

“Sarah, I don’t need you to be big and brave.  I’ve only called you to be willing.”

That’s all.  God does not need my confidence or my competence, my voice or my influence in this world.  He does not need my courage or my strength.  He has all those already.  He is the One who gives each of them freely to us!  And while He can, and will, still use our unwillingness to accomplish His plans because of His sovereignty, He does desire for us to be willing.  Willing to be obedient.  Willing to go where he sends.  Willing to not quit.  Willing to keep pressing in to Jesus.  Willing – even when we don’t want to.

So, do we have a willing heart?  Because 2 Chronicles 16:9 says, “For the eyes of the LORD range throughout the earth to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to him.”

You might not feel big or brave, and I am definitely neither one.  But I desperately want God to find my heart fully committed to Him.  I pray, despite all that I’m feeling and everything else going on around me, to always respond like Isaiah:

“Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send?  And who will go for us?’  And I said, ‘Here am I.  Send me!’” (Isaiah 6:8).

And I pray that for you, too.