The heros always fight for the ordinary. They protect the mundane. The day to day. The boring. 

Heroes stories are exciting because they break up the monotony and give us hope of bursting free. 

Unafraid and here. 

But in the end we’re all left back in the ordinary where feeling stuck is normal and fight for the best way to raise your kids is a never resolving conundrum. 

My ordinary is two kids, soon three. Many fights. Some tantrums. Some breakthroughs and minorly epic changes. But much day to day, laundry, meals to be prepared, toys to be contained, fights dealt with, and diapers changed. The day to day feels long and boring sometimes and I long to be the hero of a story somewhere outside my home. 

I seek the big. The beautiful. The accolades. I want fame, but kind of not, too. I want the feeling of being known and having the big life where I accomplish big things. Bigger than my little kids and mountains of laundry where the chance to simplify is the highlight of my summer (next to my brother’s weddding, of course). 

My ordinary doesn’t have that. 

And then, besides my own desire for the extraordinary way out of the ordinary life, I feel the pressure to succeed and make something of myself in a way that everyone else can judge and name as worthwhile. A specific standard of achievement to live up to that I tend to I forget wasn’t really set by God …so I pursue and reach and miss the goal.

Let down, disappointed, failure. 

The words inside my head telling me I can’t do this parenthood (or life) thing like the “rest” (embracing the myth that there’s only one version of “success”) did so my own little plot doesn’t matter. (Lies)

But here in today I might be trying to claim back my ordinary. 

An invitation to be my ordinary self in this great big world. Because maybe everyone else is just being their ordinary selves too and that’s really how God keeps the world spinning. 

He creates us for a purpose and sets us here without telling us exactly what that purpose might be. So we have to live and feel it out and in the process we live a lot of plain ordinary days. And moments. And maybe a lifetime of things that might feel ordinary to us, but, in the sum of the bigger story, are extraordinary to God. 

Because He made us so. To do exactly what we’re doing in this everyday. Diapers. Cleaning. Normal. 

But I still like to believe God made us like this so he could watch us. With joy and awe and love. He delights in our ordinary extraordinary. 

He loves to watch the little moments where we see a glimpse of Him in the day to day and we invite Him closer. 

He loves to hear our voices call and ask for His attention. 

He loves to pursue our joy through the display of his creations. 

He loves to give the Kingdom vision and share His dreams. 

He’s here in our ordinary. Lighting up the sky and turning it purple upon request, sometimes. He hears our words and our joy and our despair and our longing and reaches closer. Into our ordinary. 

And tells us it’s ok to be ordinary. 

It’s ok to live in our ordinary. 

To love our ordinary. 

To have mixed feelings about our ordinary. 

And even reach out of our ordinary at times.

Our ordinary calls us deeper and closer to His heart for us.

And then somehow. 

That becomes extraordinary. 

And we are drawn up in the midst of the fight for ordinary. 

We get to choose what is in our ordinary. Is it hate, distrust, and scarcity? Or is it love, abundance, and grace?  We fight for ordinary and then are again left in the ordinary. We find the fingerprints of God in the dust of our lives. And the dust of our pianos. And we claim back ordinary.

Ordinary life comes with the reality of it being hard and unpredictably predictable.

The heroes fight for ordinary and we get to choose what ordinary is. 

But then we are also invited to rest in the ordinary of our everyday lives. 

We don’t have to be extraordinary heroes, but ordinary heros come in many disguises.

I’m pretty sure we each have a thread of that ordinary cape. 

So even when our lives aren’t big and grand or changing things for more than just a few, just hang on to your thread and follow it to the end. 

I’m pretty sure that’s where Jesus is, way more often than we think. 

The ordinary everyday. 

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Link up with us or read more thoughts on ordinary at Esther’s! Don’t miss her interview with Mihee Kim-Kort!

Find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Goodreads!

And in case you haven’t heard of it, Emily P. Freeman has a new book coming out in a few weeks called, Simply Tuesday. I had the privilege of reading an advance copy, and you guys, it’s for us! It’s all about embracing your ordinary everyday. 

She also hosts a party every week on instagram to inspire us to grab up those ordinary moments for closer consideration: #itssimplytuesday on Tuesdays, of course. If you join her there be sure to tag us #wholemama people so we can join your simple ordinary…and, you know, for a chance to win a book! That’s always a good thing :)