Everyday and Today

My 10-year high school reunion is coming up… TEN YEARS!

There is date-setting, event-planning and website-creating happening to commemorate 13-years of celebrating small-town daily life together. Memories and ridiculous pictures are resurfacing, marking and memorializing the spectrum of our stories together: coloring sheets and note-passing, play dates and game days, chicken pox and cootie shots, field days and game days, first kisses and first hurts, playground giggles and parking lot stories, choosing white or chocolate milk and choosing the next step when our everydays would no longer start at 7:42am in the Gym 3 parking lot.  

Our everydays shape us. The people. The places. The moments.

Ten years later, I remember and am still being influenced by the people who played, spoke, cheered, and loved into those critically-shaping 13 years.

Nothing looks the same in any of our lives as it did 10 years ago. And, 10 years from now, nothing will look the same as it does today. Our everydays turn into life-moving stories and immeasurable change, marked by pages written one day at a time.

And, somedays, the everydays don’t seem to be worth counting. Or remembering. Or marking.

I’ve been dragging the past couple of days in the “post-Lifa slump”… the mornings start with me waking up and checking on him, only to realize his bed is empty. Dinner doesn’t seem to be worth cooking for one. I even miss washing all the tiny clothes and the pee-pee sheets. The cottage that felt like the perfect Home, bursting with love, creativity and the crazy-beauty of the Spirit and His Family just days ago, started feeling like four empty, cold walls and a roof.

Yesterday at the feeding in Dwaleni, I had 12 beautiful children sitting on me and 4 more with their hands in my hair. Their beautiful, piercing eyes just blinked, waited and watched. And I had nothing to say, nothing to do, nothing to give. 

And I actually thought, “Did I really get a Master’s Degree in Marriage and Family Therapy to make PBJ’s, paint toenails, wipe snot, scoop beans, and sing ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes’ over and over again?”

He whispered, “YES. It’s beautiful. It’s perfect. Everything was orchestrated for today. This slice of your everyday.”

I heard Him, but I still had nothing to say. They kept blinking with those perfect eyes. They kept touching with those dirty and longing hands. They kept puckering their little pink lips, knowing that, even when Mama Kacy doesn’t have anything to say, she’ll never deny a kiss. That was enough for that day. It had to be.

They rotated places on my lap. They consumed my arms, my hands. They rubbed my skin. They drank up my touch, maybe even the part of my heart that longed for my child. They wanted to be longed for. To be touched. To fill up all the empty spaces in me and on me, and for theirs to be filled too. They would even come and cry for no apparent reason at all. And I rubbed their backs. And tried to release His comfort over all of us.

Everyday was written with profound meaning, glory, intention and love.

Yours and mine and Lifa’s and those children in Dwaleni.

We all have that same, wanting blink in us. We want our empty places to be filled. We want to be reached for and to be touched.

We want to be known. We want to be chosen. We want to belong.

And that’s for today. That’s for everyday. But it’s especially for today.

Even the today when you’re washing dishes and sheets. For the today when you’re performing life-saving surgeries. For the today when you’re on maternity bed-rest. For the today you spend driving your child back into a home with no hope. For the today when it feels and looks like you’re just doing the same thing you did yesterday. For the today when you’re achieving your biggest goal. For the today when it feels like your dreams went bankrupt.

When we’re tired, when we’re sad, when we’ve got nothing in us, and we cry out to Him – or even forget Him because the day feels like a spiritual faux pas - He says, “YES. It’s beautiful. It’s perfect. Everything was orchestrated for today. This slice of your everyday.”

But in this piece of my everyday, the last few todays and the next few, I need help. I need family to remind me the promises of His Family… and that His promises have already been fulfilled, everyday designed and written exquisitely and intricately for His perfect glory.

So here’s what we’re going to do…

I’m going to do my very best to spend every day of the next week intentionally marking my everyday for God. I’m committing to writing to you about HIS glory-story revealed in my everyday, no matter how un-glamorous it seems. 

Hang in there with me, and try to do it in your own everyday. We can use our words, our perspective and our lives to speak Light and Life or darkness and death. And somedays it takes more effort than others to choose the capitalized-letter words. And everyday it takes a Family.

“…All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.” Psalm 139:16b

“Sing to the Lord, all the earth; proclaim his salvation day after day.” 1 Chron 16:23