I've had this on my heart for so long and haven't been able to put it into words. This newfound feeling of peace and satisfaction with my life in all its simplicity. It just seemed like this conglomeration of ideas loosely tied together with some common thread that I couldn't organize and articulate. Part of the struggle was that the idea "finding the extraordinary in the ordinary" seemed so cliche and overused these days. So I was explaining these ideas to Lauren, my 10 year old daughter, hoping that the act of speaking it aloud to someone else would help me put my thoughts together. And she got it right away, she knew exactly what I was trying to say. She took my computer and wrote the Post title you see there and said, "That's what you should call it." And she was so right. Cliche or not, it is my truth these days.
I am content. I live an unbelievably ordinary life, and I am content. Happy. My bucket is full. It's a gift really, to be content. I've only recently discovered it, and I think it might just be my secret to happiness. The things is, I don't have everything I want and I haven't achieved all the dreams I've dreamt throughout my life. And some of those dreams will just go unrealized, I get that now. But what I do have is this wonderfully ordinary life, and it is extraordinary.
For example, today was proclaimed "Clean the House Day". It's 1:30 in the afternoon and all we've managed to do is sleep in, skip breakfast, have oatmeal for lunch and play Minecraft and puppies. The girls have turned our living room into a make-shift house by moving furniture, bringing out two blow up mattresses and every blanket and pillow in our house. And now they're collecting every stuffed dog we own and making a pet shop. Clean the House Day has been seriously derailed and my kids are ecstatic. And that's a typical day in our life.
And even though it's just another day, I hope they remember this day with fondness. Because life is this collection of thousands of little moments sprinkled throughout our days. Some extraordinary, but the majority just ordinary. That's where most of our lives are lived, in the every day minutia of living out the day from sunrise to sunset.
Every moment doesn't have to be a special memory, but I do hope the kids remember playing on these lazy days. I hope they remember that we sat around the dinner table each day and laughed together. I hope they remember that they each had so much to say that the baby would raise her hand so she would get a chance to talk too. I hope they remember what a pain in the butt their brother was in the mornings with his long showers. I hope they remember walking home from school with their friends, rain or shine. I hope they remember biking to the playground with their baby sister and biking to the gas station for slushies. I hope they remember having to run downstairs to get clean clothes in the morning because they weren't motivated enough to bring their clothes upstairs. I hope they remember wanting junk food for after school snacks and being told every time, no, find something healthy like fruit or yogurt. I hope they remember fighting over the front seat and making up ridiculous rules to govern the order of front seat privileges.
I hope they can look back at the ordinary and routine and remember the joy and love that was shared in living out our lives together every day. Because the intimacy of living out the day to day with each other and finding joy in the seemingly innocuous and the mundane, that is something to be cherished. It is extraordinary.
I am content. I live an unbelievably ordinary life, and I am content. Happy. My bucket is full. It's a gift really, to be content. I've only recently discovered it, and I think it might just be my secret to happiness. The things is, I don't have everything I want and I haven't achieved all the dreams I've dreamt throughout my life. And some of those dreams will just go unrealized, I get that now. But what I do have is this wonderfully ordinary life, and it is extraordinary.
For example, today was proclaimed "Clean the House Day". It's 1:30 in the afternoon and all we've managed to do is sleep in, skip breakfast, have oatmeal for lunch and play Minecraft and puppies. The girls have turned our living room into a make-shift house by moving furniture, bringing out two blow up mattresses and every blanket and pillow in our house. And now they're collecting every stuffed dog we own and making a pet shop. Clean the House Day has been seriously derailed and my kids are ecstatic. And that's a typical day in our life.
And even though it's just another day, I hope they remember this day with fondness. Because life is this collection of thousands of little moments sprinkled throughout our days. Some extraordinary, but the majority just ordinary. That's where most of our lives are lived, in the every day minutia of living out the day from sunrise to sunset.
Every moment doesn't have to be a special memory, but I do hope the kids remember playing on these lazy days. I hope they remember that we sat around the dinner table each day and laughed together. I hope they remember that they each had so much to say that the baby would raise her hand so she would get a chance to talk too. I hope they remember what a pain in the butt their brother was in the mornings with his long showers. I hope they remember walking home from school with their friends, rain or shine. I hope they remember biking to the playground with their baby sister and biking to the gas station for slushies. I hope they remember having to run downstairs to get clean clothes in the morning because they weren't motivated enough to bring their clothes upstairs. I hope they remember wanting junk food for after school snacks and being told every time, no, find something healthy like fruit or yogurt. I hope they remember fighting over the front seat and making up ridiculous rules to govern the order of front seat privileges.
I hope they can look back at the ordinary and routine and remember the joy and love that was shared in living out our lives together every day. Because the intimacy of living out the day to day with each other and finding joy in the seemingly innocuous and the mundane, that is something to be cherished. It is extraordinary.
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