A String of Ordinary Days

I’ve been pondering life lately, likely caused by a looming, landmark birthday.

I have come to understand that my life is a strand of gold, fine and precious and filled with dozens and dozens of ordinary days; I do the shopping, I do the cooking, I wash the clothes-although I do not iron; I’m a mom; I’m a grandma; I’m a wife and daughter. I’m a Sunday school teacher, a gardener, a would-be farmer. Nothing one would consider special yet these things, while ordinary in their ordinariness, are anything but ordinary.
Like the oyster with an ordinary piece of sand, we take the ordinary days and create beauty and joy.

A day at the beach with sand in our hair and between our toes becomes a glowing pearl in our string of days; a kite flown at the park, an ice cream cone on the patio; the whispers of a child playing hide and seek in closets and cupboards; all of these ordinary events create more pearls and lengthen our string; polishing them as we go.

Heartache and sadness take away some of the glow, but can only break the string if we let it; some laughter and giggles, love and tenderness, and the glow becomes vibrant once again.

After my brother died, I hungered for ordinary days; I longed for the averageness of life to resume. It has. As the first anniversary of his death is marked this week, I realized that the string never really broke at all, but has been fortified with faith, and we go on; not letting the complacency take root again is a daily routine, not taking anything for granted again is a continual process, but we try.

I have tried to treasure every grain of sand in my growing string of pearls, and endeavored to make extraordinary my string of ordinary days.

I'm taking it one Ordinary Day at a time.