Anything but Ordinary...

Growing up, I didn't want to be ordinary. I wanted to be the best at everything I did. It wasn't enough for me to be a good writer. I wanted to be the best, and winning the VFW essay contest every year from 3rd through 12th grade was my proof to myself that I was a good writer. It wasn't enough for me to play sports. Highest point scorer in basketball at Peace for the girls and boys teams helped. Best female discus thrower on Olympic High School's track team my senior year was also important. It wasn't enough for me to get good grades. That one A- my last quarter in high school that left me to graduate with a 3.998 and rank 8th in my class of 400 was good, but slightly disappointing for myself. I expected perfection. I expected to be the best. I wanted to be extraordinary. 

These plans carried through into my college years. I was pre-med. I was going to be a pediatric oncologist. I was going to be the best in my field. Plans changed. One slip up on an Organic Chemistry midterm and I knew that medical school was out of the question. My grade would be too low and I couldn't imagine any medical school would accept me as a student. So I started to look for something else to do. I found Speech and Hearing Sciences as a major. It was like the best of both my worlds: teaching and medicine. I'd get to teach like is always wanted, but I'd still get to diagnose too! I threw myself into my major and expected perfection once again. I wanted to be extraordinary. 

In every situation I would find myself in, I would convince myself I was not extraordinary. I was just ordinary.  Nothing special. Nothing spectacular. Just ordinary. 

What is ordinary anyways? The dictionary defines ordinary as something that is "of no special quality or interest; commonplace; unexceptional." My life in the last six years has been anything but ordinary. What I wouldn't give to go back and just be ordinary! Life being ordinary is not a bad thing. Same routine. Same comforts. Same people to love. Same circumstances. Just...ordinary. 

And then life became anything but ordinary. Rather than my days being filled with mundane everyday ordinary tasks, my days soon filled with detectives and CPS representatives. Visits with fire chiefs and head of law enforcement. And then it became filled with paying to get my car out of impound and talking with funeral directors. Balancing life with two baby girls and trying to make arrangements to bury my husband. Anything but ordinary...

I would plead and beg God to make my life ordinary again. To please just help me get back to the days when things were ordinary. Where I was just taking care of my babies and going to work and cooking dinner and it was just plain ordinary. To take me back to days where I didn't feel like I was drowning in my own head and I couldn't come up for air. To just take me anywhere but where I was. 

But He didn't. He didn't take me back to where I was. He didn't take me back to ordinary. Because God doesn't do ordinary. It's taken years of fighting with Satan and fighting with seizures and fighting with myself to realize I needed to stop fighting. I needed to let go and let God take over. I needed to stop trying to fix my life, stop trying to get back to ordinary, and let God step in. And it took me a long time to do that, but I finally did! And what an extraordinary life this has become!

I still have the ordinary, typically mundane tasks such as laundry and cooking dinner and work, but I now get to see them through the lenses of my Heavenly Father. I get to take every day as a brand new day, everyday as a new opportunity to live my extraordinary. The extraordinary isn't anything that I have done. It isn't anything that I create. It's the little things that He creates in my days. My girls and I get to live in His shadow and each and every second of every day is an opportunity to see the extraordinary that He has set in our path. The sparkle in Emerson's eyes as we laugh and play on the couch. The perfect form of Amelia's arms and legs as she shows me a new dance move she learned in class. The Spiritual Gift awards that their teachers granted them because they see pieces of God in their souls. The excitement at sitting down to dinner together. God take life...ordinary everyday life...and turns it into the extraordinary. Extraordinary tiny moments built into our day to remind us of His grace and mercy and power. 

Life will never be ordinary again...not when we have our Heavenly Father walking us through. And I'm not saying all days are sunshine and roses because they're not. Yesterday my grief roller coaster took a fast dip downward and my heart was so very heavy all day. Grieving loss or ordinary. But He was present in that moment also, reminding me that He was there to carry me through. Reminding me how important that cycle is. Reminding me that He was right there, and His path for me in all of the mess is anything by ordinary. 

Your path is anything but ordinary also!  Pray! Talk to Him! Ask Him to help you find your extraordinary through Him! And I will pray for each and everyone of you too! Because an ordinary life is a bit overrated. I want to live my extraordinary life with Him!!