The Sacredness of the Everyday

This has been an interesting week for me. Last Sunday, we had the water leak, then Monday brought very disturbing news from home. Mid-week the clouds started raining and they have only stopped to refill before beginning again in a day or two. So it's been a mostly gray week outside and inside my soul. Sometimes things are so deep inside of me that I can't process them and when that happens I have to move. So ready or not, I began in earnest my long overdue exercising to mostly clear my head and heart, but hoping to ultimately walk my butt off...literally. The good news is the benefits were almost immediate in many ways, but by yesterday my body had expended all the energy it had and I crashed. It rained all day and since some books I had ordered had been delivered the day before, I succumbed to the pull and laid on the couch and read all afternoon. It was wonderful!!

(Endorsement moment here - Robin Jones Gunn has been a favorite author of mine and Tiffany's since Tiffany was almost 16. She wrote great books for teenaged girls, then developed her storyline to continue into early adulthood. A few years ago, she began a series called "SisterChicks" that have been both entertaining and inspirational for those of us a little more "mature". If you have the time, check out the link to her website here and get to know her a bit if you've never done that before.)

My biggest struggles this week have been sorting through the truth of God's eternal presence and my failure, both real and perceived, to see reality when it was in front of my face. I have carried a heavy burden of responsibility for the consequences that befell our family and while I know ultimately that God allowed these things to pass, that has been the inner turmoil I have wrestled with the last couple of years. A lot of that has been resolved already, but the stirring of the pot this week brought to the surface those wrestlings again.

As I was reading yesterday in "Sisterchicks in Wooden Shoes", I came across a verse from a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier that caused me to stop and ponder.

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace.

I realized in reading those words, that the quiet hours, the rain, and even the walking had done just that - brought the beauty of God's peace to my heart and removed the strivings. Later in the book, she uses the phrase, "the sacredness of the everyday" and it was like God was making sure I got the point. Each day brings part of the eternal with it and the longing for things to be made right is ultimately the longing for heaven that God has woven into our being.

Yes, I would like the circumstances in my life and those I love to be good and right and happy all the time, but we live in a fallen world and that's just not reality. My challenge to you, and one I am accepting as well, is to find the sacredness of the everyday that God brings across our paths and to let the beauty of His peace remove the strain and stress from our ordered lives.

While she's not exactly where she's supposed to be resting, I think Kit just might be catching on!