In a Church Basement

Today is Thanksgiving. It came in the last few days of November this year so it was almost late to its own party. I'm just glad it is here. I've looked forward to it almost as much as when I was littler; not because I got to dress up as a Native American and play with my cousins, but because it breaks up my incessant schedule.

This morning, then, I woke up and pulled on my favorite American Eagle jeans and a comfy flannel shirt―both no-nos at work. I ate some yogurt and a pancake and then we all piled into the truck and drove less then 10 miles up the other side of the lake to a Presbyterian church Mom and Dad had heard was running a soup kitchen of sorts.

The church building was typical looking, white-sided with a dirt parking lot that had melted and refrozen just enough times to be a death trap to any pedestrian. We wobbled (not gobbled) around until we found an unlocked door that lead downstairs to the basement―I recall the appropriate vernacular is "fellowship hall."

It smelled like the church basements of my childhood: musty, dank, and corn casserole. It looked like them too. I swear a church isn't a church unless it has the ugliest carpet that's always colored a cross between tennis ball and vomit green. The perfect carpet to accommodate those one or two families (Lord love 'em, 'cause we don't) who still come to Sunday morning church even though their kid was throwing up all night long and ain't done yet.

Also just like other churches I've known, the people were pretty wonderful: cheerful, hospitable, a little nervous. Everyone trying to make conversation but making mostly bad jokes instead―that we all laugh at.

The whole thing coughed and sputtered a bit as it started, but they've only been doing it about 6 years, and until last year it was a pretty small event. This year, they made and delivered 150 Thanksgiving dinners to local people in need, and projected a hundred or two would come to the church for a meal.

It was a cool experience to help out for a few hours, even if it was just setting tables, or plating pie, or scooping mashed taters―a 15 year old on my left dishing up squash, and an 80 year old on my right serving turkey―into takeout box after takeout box.

Everything I do these days seems so, so small. I go to a small church. I helped out today at another small church. I'm just a waitress and a college student. I've been here 20 years and so far have left very small footprints. I'm blessed that some of those footprints are in Italy, but even my time there was small, working with Saints Equipped to Evangelize, a very small ministry.

Most of us, we are born and we live and we do small things and then we die.

A very small part of my very small self likes to think this is just a "season" in my life. The verse that runs something like "be faithful in the small things and God will give you big things" repeats in my head sometimes, tells me to keep breathing, to get one more "A," to serve up one more Steuben Reuben panini with a smile.

That very small part of me wonders if I might, one day, have a big footprint. One day, could I be the next Katie Davis, Anne Voskamp, (Oprah Winfrey, anyone?), Gladys Aylward, Florence Nightingale...? Could I change enough of the world to be a world-changer?

What is it inside of me that makes me want to be that kind of person, when I'm honestly not all that enthralled with life? Is it the little kid in me that still thinks I'm gonna be an Olympian or an astronaut or president? I ask, because...my desire to do big things, be a "world-changer," may or may not be right. It may not be necessary.

Most people (at 20 years old I'm still looking to "most people" to get hints on how to play this game) don't do big things. Most people leave a haphazard string of small footprints, not fancy big ones.

Know what? I know often times those ineloquent, crooked lines are beautiful and tell the story of lives lived humanly, but lived well; lives that loved and served and spread joy. I also know that at the end of the line, it doesn't matter about the size of the footprint―it's the size of the heart that made the footprint.

Thing is, I'm convinced that any big heart has the potential to leave a big footprint and I don't want to settle if there's the possibility that God will grow my heart and strengthen my steps and bring more honor to himself.

'Cause if I gotta live and God won't have mercy and take me right now like I want Him to, damn it, I'm gonna live well.