As Lent begins today my mind keeps returning to the ordinary, the daily grind that we call life. In years past, I have approached Lent with the idea that things had to be more than ordinary, that somehow the ordinary had to be put aside to accomplish something extra-ordinary during this special time of the liturgical season.
Today, what sits upon my heart is that it is in the ordinary that I will accomplish the extra-ordinary if I put to good use the tools that the church gives me to be intentional in my growth toward Christ. If I will fully accept the graces that are offered to me I can't help but grow closer and more deeply in love with the one who loves perfectly, eternally.
How does one grow closer to Christ through dishes, laundry, cooking, cleaning, teaching, sweeping, vacuuming, running here and there carting children to one activity or another or to one appointment and then to the next? How can I become a better daughter of Christ by listening to the complaints, the whining and the never-ending bickering of several children? How can I find peace in the inability to find the rhythm of my life?
Struggle, the struggle of the ordinary, the mundane, the seemingly unimportant must be the way in which Christ wants me to search for Him. The struggle to understand that all those other more 'worthy' things I'd sometimes rather be doing are not the path He has chosen for me in this season of my life.
I pray that I will remain on the path of the ordinary until I can have peace that I am doing the ordinary, extra-ordinarily.