Ordinary and Extraordinary

I updated the blog today - changed the header to a photo of our family's Chucks (taken by Karen Harris during a recent family photo shoot), revised my blog description and tweaked my profile a bit.

Ordinary life.  Extraordinary love.

That sums it up for me. 

Days drift into the next.  Branches hold leaves, then snow, then buds.  Holidays bring hearts, then eggs, then flags, then pumpkins, then reindeer. Songs are frequent.  Laughs are easy.  Prayers are prayed.  Tears are dried.  Inches are grown.  Shoes are too small too fast.  Meals are devoured.  Miles are driven.  Jobs are worked.  Books are read.  Kisses are generous.  Lives are lived.

It's a life familiar to millions of people.  An ordinary life.

Often I feel the weight of its sameness.  It can hang heavy on my shoulders.

Then I'm reminded of the love. 

The extraordinary love that I feel for and get from the people God has placed into this ordinary life of mine, those people who fill up and sometimes break my heart, who stoke the fire in my soul.  The love that brushes the weight from my shoulders as if it were feathery instead of leaden and allows me to close my eyes and breathe deeply and recognize the unique beauty these ordinary days are full of. 

I recently had a conversation with one of my oldest and best friends about getting bogged down by the everydays and forgetting to take the time to be still and watch the moon or dance in the rain and stretch the internal freedom we sometimes feel we have to suppress to live these ordinary days.  Thanks, Jen, for that conversation. 

In the end we decided it's all about balance.  Give and receive, do and rest, work and play, sacrifice and reserve.  Balance and awareness - I think those are the keys...

Keys to making the ordinary the extraordinary.