The Key to Finding Contentment in Midlife is Knowing: Life Happens in the ORDINARY After All
Frankly, ordinary is boring.
Why wasn’t I called for something bigger? Or grander?
Why couldn’t I be famous? Or rich? Or brilliant? Or at least one of those people who can eat whatever I want and never gain an ounce of weight?
Why can’t my life’s ministry, or whatever you want to call it, be in far-away places doing amazing, life-changing service work?
Why didn’t my latest book shoot me to the top of some special list so that maybe Katie Couric calls and wants to interview me and suddenly I become a household name?
Why can’t I seem to find my life’s meaning?
I mean, really, I’m just…ordinary? I’m supposed to do dishes, again? And this laundry pile? Are you serious, God???
I wanted my life to be a little more dramatic and meaningful and fruitful and…significant, somehow.
I wanted to be asked up on stage (though the idea of actually being on stage makes me feel trembly). I wanted a ministry or a charity or at least someplace other than these four walls to serve. I wanted to be picked for something a little more…special. Instead, He plunked me down right where I am. And for now, He has given me much less glamorous places to serve.
And on top of that, just when I grasp the current stage and find a rhythm and routine for the ins and outs of our family in the current phase of this middle part of my boring ordinary life, a new milestone hits our home. Someone turns into a tween or a teenager or starts at a new school or gets a learner’s permit or earns a big promotion at work or starts filling out college applications or gets married or announces they are having a baby. Some brand-new part of motherhood or marriage or life settles in, and I find myself floundering.
Wait, what? How do I manage THIS scenario? I haven’t been here before.
Meanwhile, the same old dishes need to be washed. The same mouths need to be fed. The dog is begging for a walk, and our backyard is covered in the same piles of smelly surprises. My second grader has influenza. We’re out of milk again. And the trash is overflowing the bathroom garbage can. Who’s turn is it? I’m not sure. I can’t keep up with the mundane.
My ordinary life is somehow too much while also feeling like it can’t possibly be enough. Shouldn’t my life be bigger? Plus, shouldn’t I be better at it somehow?
I long to be freed from the fantasy that one day I’ll manage, and somehow, I’ll become the new-and-improved me with just the right exercise program, a weekly (monthly!) meal plan, a cleaning schedule for a spotless and perfectly organized home. The illusion that somehow, I’ll discover the answer to becoming a patient mother with prodigy children, wildly successful in all my endeavors.
But I’m realizing there isn’t a time or place where one day we’ll arrive and it’s just coasting after that. Relaxing. From what I understand after 23+ years of marriage and parenting, we don’t ever get there.
Our relationships change. Our job descriptions change. Our roles as mother and spouse and daughter and sister and friend change. Our children grow and move away and begin their own adult lives with spouses and jobs and children of their own. Our parents will die. Our spouses will develop chronic illnesses. Our energy will diminish. Our bodies will fail.
And in the middle of it all, the same old dishes will need to be done. The meals will have to be made. The dog and the yard and the trash and my ridiculous email inbox will demand my attention. Life will change, though the mundane parts will mostly remain the same.
And really, it is so beautiful and comforting to know this often-boring life I’m living is exactly the grand plan God has in mind.
Turns out, life happens in the ordinary after all.
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