5 Minute Friday: Ordinary

I am feeling Spring in my bones despite what the temperature gauge reads. I went as far as to paint a peachy pink shade on my toes and traipse around on Sunday in flip flops. Here we are on Friday and another week closer to daffodils and robins and at this point I'd even take allergies as a sign that the hope of Spring is near. Around here on Friday I take the time to find joy in writing. I write free and fearless for five minutes along with a slew of other fantastic writers. We just let the writing spring to life and we don't worry about if it is perfect. We just let it run wild and free from our fingertips. Sounds a bit like Spring to me. A bit of life springing onto a screen.

Topic: Ordinary
GO!

There are a few extraordinary moments in a person's life and those moments are never predictable and don't come cozied between breakfast and lunch...or do they? We've been taught by posters on classroom walls to shoot for the stars and to dream big dreams, but what if all the reaching for more than ordinary makes us blind to the glorious everyday. The everyday ordinary is always extraordinary for the Easter people because the ordinary is full of the undeserved goodness of an extra-anything-but-ordinary God.

This week I fought the uphill battle of "no" with a toddler. I shared the hard and the ugly with a room full of women and they nodded understanding and prayers. I cooked dinner, big and in more than one pot (will small miracles never cease?), only to find a husband working late and me alone to eat. All of it seemed very par for the course. An ugly way over par game. All of it seemed ordinary. My ordinary in all its forms from Sunday to Saturday.

Another mama, a family friend, had her ordinary shattered by death as her little one slipped from life to death in a blink. It would be easy to find complaints in my ordinary. Complaints about the late work nights and the early mornings and the busy that I try to sweep away from the edges of my life. I know in my bones that mama prays for just one more day of ordinary with her dear girl. One more day to make life matter even in the mundane. The mundane fills in the negative space of a glorious work of art. This life is a glorious piece of God-sized art. The finished product isn't the same without the mundane. One dimensional. No depth. No light in contrast. 

I don't want to waste the ordinary on my own discontent. The gooey gross kisses of a 14 month old are an extraordinary gift. The dirty dishes and taut full toddler belly pooches are an out of the ordinary treasure in the midst of ordinary. The curl of my body against his after an exhausting day is a rare jewel of life. I'm stringing a necklace of ordinary and no matter where it ends it will be beautiful. As beautiful in its making as it will be in its completion.

I want to admire every moment of the making. This making of an extraordinary ordinary life.


STOP!