Ordinary Holiness

My days are riddled with routine--get boys up at this time, get lunches made, papers signed, out the door, work with little's at the pre-school, pick-up my own from school, figure out dinner, watch Blue Bloods on cable, tuck boys in, tuck myself in, start it all over the next day.  I am so grateful for Grandparents who help us juggle all the activity, especially as the various sports seasons add another dimension to all our running.  In a recent conversation with Tall and Handsome Husband we were discussing the complications that would soon ensue as three boys begin playing on three different basketball teams.  I told him, "This is what I signed up for."

It all seems so . . . . ordinary.  Having come out of campus ministry where part of my job was to mentor young adults as they plotted out their life adventures, ordinary never came up.  We never talked about what it is like when your life revolves around someone else's needs, and the most exciting thing you get to do is eat out at a restaurant instead of cooking at home.  Dreams were never made of mundane.  But each day I ponder the paradox of my daily ordinariness:  how rich in meaning mundane can be.

It's funny to me now.  In the early days, when I began full time ministry as an associate pastor, I started each day with at least one hour of complete silence.  This time was set apart for reading, praying, studying my Bible, jotting notes in a journal, attending to the condition of my soul.  I felt like this was the minimum for maintaining a proper spiritual life.  Today I still consider these elements essential for a "quiet time," yet it is never really quiet.  And I am rarely completely by myself.  And an hour every day?  You've got to be kidding! 

I carve out my "quiet time" in mornings between the oldest boy catching the bus, and the younger ones turning on the TV after they finish breakfast and get dressed.  In the background is the hum of munching cereal, finding appropriate length pants, and the occasional rift when two younger boys have to share bathroom space for the brushing of the teeth.  I have learned how to ignore the noise around me.  For my morning meeting with God this is good.  When two young men are on the cusp of bodily harming one another, this is bad.  Sometimes I am drawn from my meditation by the sound of, "You stop!", "No, you stop!"  I am comforted by the story of Susanna Wesley, the mother of John and Charles Wesley, the founders of the Methodism.   A mother of many children, she had her quiet time each day at the kitchen table, hunched over her Bible with an apron pulled over her head.

Here is what I have learned in all of this:  We can find holiness right where we are, even in the most trying or ordinary circumstances.  We don't have to have everything just right to connect to what matters most.

I light a candle on the kitchen table, during hectic weekday mornings.  It is a simple gesture, but it reminds me that the Light of Jesus shines here, even if I am blind to it.  I open the blinds to my backyard.  As the sun comes up I can see midst hugging the ground, softening the landscape.  It's beautiful every time.  And I am amazed that such beauty can exist even when a boy has left a half-empty Gatorade bottle sitting at the edge of our patio.  Every morning I sit before this window with hot tea in hand, gazing out at this small patch of nature, thinking about how God wakes up the world each day.  I am part of that world God made.  These boys also a part of created beauty. 

I send boys off to school with prayer.  It always follows the same pattern:  prayers for wisdom, help making good choices, blessings for teachers, prayers for Daddy, help for me with the little's at preschool.  They tolerate it.  I want them to know what it means to have each day anchored in One bigger than all of us, grounded in God's love, guided by God's hand.  I want them to feel like their mornings are not complete without reaching for the Divine Hand as we walk into the day.  I always ask, "Do you have any joys and concerns?"  Sometimes they are just happy that it's hat day at school, or they get an extra P.E. 

Sometimes my holiest moments are in the car, when I am alone, going to or from work.  I turn off the radio and ponder the world as I drive past it all.  There are truly some pretty streets where I live.  But then there are the ones that have construction, lots of utility lines, businesses lining the roads.  Sometimes I fantasize that I could be hiking the Smokey Mountains or sitting on the edge of the ocean surrounded by pristine sand and clear, emerald waters.  And then a little voice within me asks, "What?  Are you going to ignore the beauty around you because you have to look through some cable wires to see it?"

Isn't beauty still beautiful, even when it is surrounded by signs of human "progress?"  Isn't evidence of God's Hand around us Holy, even when we have to look past all the other stuff getting in the way?  Don't I get to choose what I have eyes and ears for?  Isn't it possible to ask for help in recognizing Holiness when it is just under our noses?  Isn't that nose itself, designed by Divine genius, holy too?

We can get lost in routine, or routine can become the Holy Rhythm that orders our days.  We can see within the ordinary the treasure of God's gifts.  I have found that I can choose what my day looks like:  I can become preoccupied with all the awful things happening, or I can seek within each humble day the presence the Holy One who loves us powerfully and Who is holding us all in Holy Hands.  There I find the strength to face the hardship and heartache and the offer my own imperfect love to a struggling and hurting world.