Becoming Small - Micha Boyett<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Glee is my dream show. I love musicals. I love silliness. And I love high school. No. Scrap that. I did not love high school when I was in it. But,\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/michaboyett\/2010\/04\/becoming-small\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Becoming Small - Micha Boyett\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Glee is my dream show. I love musicals. I love silliness. And I love high school. No. Scrap that. I did not love high school when I was in it. 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{"id":286,"date":"2010-04-12T09:34:47","date_gmt":"2010-04-12T16:34:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mamamonk.com\/?p=286"},"modified":"2010-04-12T09:34:47","modified_gmt":"2010-04-12T16:34:47","slug":"becoming-small","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/michaboyett\/2010\/04\/becoming-small\/","title":{"rendered":"Becoming Small"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Glee<\/a> <\/em>is my dream show. I love musicals. I love silliness. And I love high school. No. Scrap that. I did not love high school when I was in it. But, somehow, high school people became my career. And I love high school people\u2026which means I\u2019ve spent a LOT of time in and at high schools since leaving the one I attended in the nineties.<\/p>\n

So, when I watched the Mattress <\/em>episode<\/a> (this past weekend\u2026we\u2019ve been catching up on Hulu), in which Rachel poses for every club photo in her goal of total club domination, I couldn\u2019t stand how much I loved it. I was Rachel in high school\u2026accept way less talented and probably less annoying because I tried not to talk so much. But the earnestness? Yes. The awkward yet almost cute clothes? Yes. The longing to be in every club humanly possible? Yes. However, Rachel and I had different goals in mind. Her goal was to get her photo in the yearbook on every page in order to prepare for her future singing and acting career. My goal was to be in every club so that I would win the most awards possible my senior year. I\u2019m not joking.<\/p>\n

It worked. I won a LOT of awards. And then high school was over and no one has any memory of who was \u201cSenior Girl of the Year.\u201d<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve always had an obsession with being exceptional. That\u2019s why I struggle as a stay-at-home mom. I want to be someone of significance, someone important. Now, if you\u2019d like to, you can start whispering emotionally in my ear about how significant I\u2019ll be in the lives of my children and I can nod my head and smile and say, \u201cYes, that\u2019s true.\u201d But your explanation won\u2019t be enough for me. I would rather be important in the lives of thousands of children. I would rather get streets named after me and live a life that inspires. My need to be affirmed by you is the sign of something much deeper in me, something broken.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had a sticky note on the wall above my desk for the past four months that reads: \u201cAccept my own smallness.\u201d That\u2019s the phrase David Robinson uses in his book, The Family Cloister<\/em><\/a>, to describe humility.\u00a0 St. Benedict<\/a> defines it in his Rule as being \u201cconvinced in our hearts that we are inferior to all\u201d (Chapter 7). It\u2019s one of the most important daily monk steps I\u2019ve been incorporating into my life since I left full time ministry and began to stay home with my son.\u00a0 I would rather not be inferior to all\u2026or I would at least like you to think I\u2019m awesome for acting like I\u2019m inferior to all. But daily motherhood is the perfect incubator for accepting my own smallness. I\u2019m caring for one little boy<\/em> in a world full of people who need care. There\u2019s no one around to watch and admire my skill. August is not going to remember much of these days at home with me.\u00a0 So, I wipe his bottom and help him brush his teeth. I build towers and sing songs. And, nobody knows.<\/p>\n

For a long time, I thought of humility as being something like an \u201cAh shucks,\u201d attitude (as Dennis Okholm describes it in Monk Habits for Everyday People<\/em><\/a>). When people said good things about me, I was supposed to shrug my shoulders and pretend like their praise meant nothing.<\/p>\n

What I\u2019m learning is that underneath my actions and even my own knowledge of myself, I need to believe that my value lies not in what I accomplish, what I read, or what I have to say. It\u2019s not even about how good I am at being a mom. My value is found is a secret place in the center, where I begin to recognize that I\u2019m lovable because I\u2019m loved by my Creator. I have value because I\u2019m valued already. I\u2019m unique because my life is worth Christ\u2019s life, because I\u2019m already loved apart from my actions.<\/p>\n

Benedict says humility is a life-long practice, like every other spiritual process. I\u2019m not going to learn it through a step-by-step program. I\u2019m going to learn it slowly by changing diapers and buying groceries and letting myself be small.\u00a0 Or, as Michael Casey says in his Guide to Living in the Truth<\/em><\/a>, \u201cHumility is a very slow business if it is authentic.\u201d<\/p>\n

How is your life forcing you into that authentic process of becoming small?<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"