A Small Woman

Some days, I wonder what is my real purpose here on this earth and if I am, in any measure, finding it and fulfilling it.

The movie is titled “The Inn of the Sixth Happiness” and the story is taken from a book called ‘The Small Woman’ about one Gladys Aylward. She never felt that the life she had led was worthy of special note or acclaim. To use a modern phrase a bit altered, “It was what it was” to Gladys Aylward.

She was remarkable in that she allowed no conventional barrier of place or station in English society of preventing her from following her heart to China as a missionary and an eventual temporal savior to around a hundred Chinese orphans who were cared for and shepherded to safety by her guidance.

Though she was interviewed about her time in China by a BBC correspondent who was digging deep for juicy details, Gladys felt there really wasn’t anything of note to offer. In her own humble words, Gladys told Alan Burgess, the reporter, “I doubt people who listen to BBC would think I've done anything interesting.”

As she reluctantly shared her experiences, Burgess sat amazed at all that this ‘small woman’ had indeed accomplished as part of her missionary opportunities among the Chinese people. The account is as follows: Alan Burgess, who was producing a series on war heroes for the BBC radio, visited her in the hope a missionary could tell him about heroes she had heard about in China. Well, no, she said in her rusty English. She didn't actually know any heroes. "What about yourself?" he asked the little woman half-heartedly. "Did you have a scrape or two?" "I doubt people who listen to BBC would think I've done anything interesting." "Didn't you even come into contact with the Japanese invaders?" he pressed. "Yes," she answered cryptically. It wouldn't be very forgiving if she told Alan Burgess the Japanese had shot her down in a field outside Tsechow. Bombed her too. In Yangcheng. Strafed her near Lingchuang too. Smashed her on the noggin once with a rifle butt too. Finally put a price on her head: dead or alive. "Some Japanese are very nice, you know," she volunteered. "Apparently your life in China was rather sheltered," he grunted dryly. Gladys had to offer the poor man something. "I did take some children to an orphanage near Sian." "You don't say?" he grumbled, not hiding disappointment. "Kids? To an orphanage?" "Yes, we had to cross some mountains." Burgess perked up. "Real mountains?" "Yes, I believe you would call them real mountains. The journey was made more difficult because we couldn't walk on the main trails. Oh, and then we had to get across the Yellow River too." "Isn't that the notorious river that drowns so many it's called 'China's Sorrow'?" Burgess was more and more aghast as Gladys detailed her trek. His voice choked. "You ran out of food? You had no money? Just you and 100 kids - many of whom were toddlers - trekked for one month across mountains, across the Yellow River, ducking Japanese patrols and dive-bombers? And at Sian you were diagnosed with typhus and pneumonia and malnutrition? Yes, Miss Aylward, I think people who listen to BBC would think you've done something interesting…" [Source: The Small Woman by Alan Burgess, 1957, revised addition, 1969].

In my heart of hearts, I know that we are not supposed to compare our lives to those of others. But in my heart of hearts, I also know that, for the most part, my life has been a waste of time, talent and energy in pursuit of who knows what.

I was recently asked what I was most afraid of in life. My answer was ‘unfulfilled potential’.

While I understand that everyone is in a life’s circumstance that is tailor made for them by a kind and loving Father in Heaven who understands us and our capacities, I worry that what has been made for me in my life has gone largely unrecognized as I have searched for something else that I thought to be better.

I have bartered away what could have been for the fear of one tiny word - Ordinary.

That’s why.

The brand mark of unfulfilled potential in the minds of people the world over who daydream of being something ‘greater’ yet who do nothing to achieve greatness. Preparation for life and it’s circumstances are not always given due attention because the dream of something better overshadows all else.

No one wants to be ordinary, yet most of us are.

We wake up and eat breakfast and kiss someone goodbye as our day begins only to do the same things in our jobs or wash the same clothing we just washed a couple of days before. We return together as family or friends or come home alone at the end of our day, whether that end comes at sunrise or sunset. And like the dreams of Tevya in ‘Fiddler on the Roof’, we seek to be wealthy and have the dreams of avarice to let everyone know just how important we want to be.
But reality for us is more the day to day, the empty pack of dental floss, the half eaten breakfast as we realize we woke up late and will now have to rush to get to our destination. That doesn’t have to be a bad reality because most of us spend our time trying to make sure our family and friends know that we love them at least once in a while amidst the chaos and the shouting and the running man activity that defines who we are when the alarm goes off each day.

Who are we when we are alone with our thoughts?

Are we heroic or cowering, willing or hostile? Do we awake with only the most vague memories of dreams gone by or a Technicolor remembrance that would put Tinsel Town to shame – if only it could be recorded? Or are our days simply a mechanism to get to the next day?

There has to be a balance between the reality and the dream.

So far, I am struggling to find it.

I teeter between the two like a tightrope walker drunken on the ambition fueled by a cheering crowd.

Who am I when the crowd falls silent and what use have I made of the resident potential within?

Heroic is truly in the eye of the beholder and there may be times that my most heroic moments have been only visible to another. At least I hope there have been some heroic moments – those times when I allowed my better self to do the right thing for the benefit of ANYONE but me. Those golden seconds where the needs of another truly meant more to me than any need I may have had for myself. Somewhere, a grain of sand fell from the hourglass of my life with a name upon it not my own.

I hope to God that is true. Because I can’t count the number of grains that I may have left in my hourglass and I don’t know how fast it might be trickling through.

Is it evil to want your family and friends to remember you well and think upon your memory and face as a wonderful thing?

While in our respective spheres of influence we may be ‘small’, there lies within us all the seed of greatness that is nourished along in the slowest of growth until the time to burst forth fully flowered arrives and the heroic springs from our hearts and sheds forth its fruit for the welfare of someone not ourselves.

Is a life worth living if it is only for and to oneself?

And how can we truly know if what we have done was motivated by a Godly desire to become more than our simple self and be a part of the Grand Design or if our motives have been so tainted that our personal darkness appears unto us as light?

I have no answers that I can put into words. I am just so humbled by the Savior’s sacrifice of his very blood for someone like me who cannot string together 15 minutes of cohesive service to another without being a bit like the man who wanted to know ‘what was in it for him’... it gets to be a bit overwhelming.

Gladys Aylward knew what it meant to sacrifice for another in the pattern that the Master showed us. She wasn’t a small woman then and I don’t believe she is a small woman in the Kingdom of God now.