Life in Ordinary Time

Photo by Bruno Nascimento (2017) via Unsplash, CC0 Public Domain. Text added by author.[/caption] While the special holiday last week was certainly our Fourth of July Independence Day, let’s not forget that July 3 was National Chocolate Wafer Cookie Day. It’s true. Turns out there is a National Chocolate something day at least once a month in this country! When I learned about the July 3 national day, I printed out a picture of chocolate wafers and wrote a note to my family on the back, inviting them to a chocolate-cookie date with me. As I reflect on this silly experience, what strikes me is how simple it is to add some unexpected fun, anticipation, and an opportunity for connection into an otherwise ordinary day. It also strikes me how infrequently I do this! And reminds me of the bigger truth that my life is really a collection of ordinary moments. Life is not only the BIG events like weddings, births, graduations, and vacations. Those are surely wonderful and special. And yet, I think it is the ordinary moments I would miss most if they were suddenly gone from my life: morning prayers & coffee, the sound of my kids making pancakes together in the kitchen, the connection and gratitude I feel after a coaching session with a client, smelling the lavender flowers in the garden, sitting on the front porch together delighting in the fireflies, and so many more. The ordinary moments are the gold: my life's treasure. Most of the liturgical year in the Catholic Church is known as Ordinary Time. The season of Ordinary Time is represented by the color green: green altar cloths, green vestments, and so on. Just as green buds form on trees each spring, the color green is associated with growth and renewal. And isn’t the “ordinary time” of my life the place where I am personally called to growth and renewal? Living within a family dynamic and caring for the physical as well as emotional and spiritual needs of those He has placed here with me calls me forth in many ways! The Lord fills each ordinary day with countless opportunities for me to grow into the patient, loving, self-controlled woman He had in mind when He created me! Ordinary time is the growing time: the time where we grow in holiness by living out our call to love in a thousand ordinary ways.

“Do not be afraid of holiness. It will take away none of your energy, vitality or joy. On the contrary, you will become what the Father had in mind when he created you, and you will be faithful to your deepest self.” – Pope Francis