Finding Adventure in the Everyday
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A couple of weeks ago I took Kate out for coffee. She was leaving town for a few days, and I wanted to just sit with her before she left.
Time with Kate is always good.
So I'm sipping my latte and getting caught up on her latest news and somehow we got around to talking about my writing, or my lack thereof, and how that frustrates me on one level and frees me on another, when Kate kind of threw a challenge in my face.
"Mom, why don't you quit worrying about writing some big revelation and just write about your life?" Somehow she thinks that people might be interested in my daily visits to the grocery store or the number of times I travel Main Street.
So sweet.
So I've been mulling that over for a couple of weeks, and then, yesterday, I read this post by The Nester: Today was Spectacular in an Ordinary Way. She's in Uganda with Compassion right now--I just love what they're doing there.
What really struck me wasn't so much the dichotomy between the ordinary and the extraordinary, it was the fact that my life, or so I profess, is so much like that too. Ordinary. But not.
I think I get stuck when I write sometimes because I feel like I have nothing to say. No "big revelations" as Kate would call them. Some days are just plain ordinary.
But what if I just shared my very ordinary life? And what if you were reading about my very ordinary life and thinking to yourself, "I get that"? And what if some small ordinary nugget of my very ordinary day in my very ordinary life suddenly looked to you like that 6'2" Ugandan woman in a wedding dress stirring a pot of beans. (Did you actually click on the Nester's post? You have to read it to get what I'm talking about here.)
So I'm putting a challenge out here to myself: write the ordinary. Because my life is spectacularly ordinary in so many ways, but what I do know is that God is here and He is in it and I'd like Him to use it somehow, even if it's in an ordinary way. What I'm proposing (to myself) is that I tell you about my day every day for, say, the month of February (it's a short one), and let's see what happens.
This blog is one huge experiment anyway, so why not experiment with letting you in a little bit?
So, hold on to your seats, folks. You're going to get in on the ride of your life. A mini-van-covered-with-salt-and-coated-with-dog-hair-that-hasn't-been-cleaned-in-weeks (oh, Lord, I can't remember the last time my car was cleaned--I'm so sorry!) kind of ride.
Let's see if I can find the adventure in the everyday.
Will you join me? And promise to still be my friend at the end of the experiment?
P.S. Yes, I will still be writing about Downton Abbey because I just can't not. And besides, the Crawleys or the Granthams or whatever they're called are some of the most interesting people in my life!
Time with Kate is always good.
So I'm sipping my latte and getting caught up on her latest news and somehow we got around to talking about my writing, or my lack thereof, and how that frustrates me on one level and frees me on another, when Kate kind of threw a challenge in my face.
"Mom, why don't you quit worrying about writing some big revelation and just write about your life?" Somehow she thinks that people might be interested in my daily visits to the grocery store or the number of times I travel Main Street.
So sweet.
So I've been mulling that over for a couple of weeks, and then, yesterday, I read this post by The Nester: Today was Spectacular in an Ordinary Way. She's in Uganda with Compassion right now--I just love what they're doing there.
What really struck me wasn't so much the dichotomy between the ordinary and the extraordinary, it was the fact that my life, or so I profess, is so much like that too. Ordinary. But not.
I think I get stuck when I write sometimes because I feel like I have nothing to say. No "big revelations" as Kate would call them. Some days are just plain ordinary.
But what if I just shared my very ordinary life? And what if you were reading about my very ordinary life and thinking to yourself, "I get that"? And what if some small ordinary nugget of my very ordinary day in my very ordinary life suddenly looked to you like that 6'2" Ugandan woman in a wedding dress stirring a pot of beans. (Did you actually click on the Nester's post? You have to read it to get what I'm talking about here.)
So I'm putting a challenge out here to myself: write the ordinary. Because my life is spectacularly ordinary in so many ways, but what I do know is that God is here and He is in it and I'd like Him to use it somehow, even if it's in an ordinary way. What I'm proposing (to myself) is that I tell you about my day every day for, say, the month of February (it's a short one), and let's see what happens.
This blog is one huge experiment anyway, so why not experiment with letting you in a little bit?
So, hold on to your seats, folks. You're going to get in on the ride of your life. A mini-van-covered-with-salt-and-coated-with-dog-hair-that-hasn't-been-cleaned-in-weeks (oh, Lord, I can't remember the last time my car was cleaned--I'm so sorry!) kind of ride.
Let's see if I can find the adventure in the everyday.
Will you join me? And promise to still be my friend at the end of the experiment?
P.S. Yes, I will still be writing about Downton Abbey because I just can't not. And besides, the Crawleys or the Granthams or whatever they're called are some of the most interesting people in my life!
