Normal Days

Lots of my days are just normal. They involve caring for kids, running errands, making meals and folding laundry. At first glance, there is nothing amazing or necessarily noteworthy about most of them. They are just normal days.

But are they?

I am reminded this weekend, as I think about tragedy in the lives of families I knew from high school, or dear friends who have given up on their marriage, or the many, many, many other things going on around the globe - both exciting or full of sadness - I am reminded that there is great comfort in the plain, old, normal. It is where the majority of life is truly lived. Where we spend most of our time.

And there are noteworthy things in the normal and everyday if you have the right perspective. Because a lot of normal days eventually turn into a lifetime. I am working on appreciating the everyday. The little things can be full of gratitude and magic. We can stop looking for the rare and glamorous spotlight moments in life and start finding thankfulness and joy in the regular, everyday stuff (largely inspired by the reading of the terrific book I am in the middle of called One Thousand Gifts, by Ann Voskamp - you really, really should pick up a copy)

So today, celebrate the normal that you are living...and appreciate it. Find joy and thankfulness in it.

After all - today is what you have.

"Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day, I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return."

*** the above quote came from a blog reader, Sadie, who shared that her 83 year old mother has the above quotation written on a yellowed, curled clipping stuck to her bathroom mirror - inspiring and wise, don't you think???