Ordinary

The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children. - G.K. Chesterton

I've been stuck on this idea of the ordinary for the last couple of months.

I went to Ireland, and it was great. But so much of my time spent there was very ordinary. I worked in an office from 8-5 every single day. I made dinner with my friends, watched movies, went for walks with my friends, had a birthday party, slept in a bed every single night. My life there seemed so ordinary.

But it definitely wasn't. I spent three months with people who have dropped everything to move to a completely foreign culture in order to empower the Church in that culture. I had no family in this culture, but many of the families "adopted" me as their own - treated me as a big sister, daughter. For a lot of them, English was not their first language.

There were castles EVERYWHERE. And I'm not being sarcastic. I ALMOST got used to seeing them, that's how many there were. You could see them off the motorway (Interstate), on small roads, next to churches, next to cottages, in the city centre, everywhere. But they never ceased to amaze me, even though I saw them in so many places.

 

The castle you see above is Roscommon Castle. It was my favorite. On top of all of the castles being ridiculously awesome and totally not normal, the flowers were ridiculous to. There are flowers all over the place in Ireland. Roses and roses and roses and roses.... and then all kinds of other flowers too! (Obviously, I need to learn what flowers they actually are. ha ha.)

The crazy thing about all of this was that it is completely normal for all the people that live in Ireland. The Irish are really great about taking a moment to stop and appreciate what's around them, and they will quickly tell you what is awesome about their country. But all of the beauty is normal to them.

I went to Italy after Ireland and there is a completely different sense of pride there. They know that their country is beautiful in its own way, and they very willingly tell you all about it.

These places are so beautiful, and so ordinary to the people that live there... So my definition of the ordinary is being changed. It's making my view of my job different. So instead of thinking that it doesn't matter how I bag someone's groceries or talk to a customer matters, I remember that it does matter, because the ordinary is actually extraordinary.

God doesn't just call us to glorify him in the big things, in the great. In stead he call us to glorify him in everything that we do. So I should glorify him in everything, whether I'm walking through the streets of Galway and Venice or cleaning the kitchen for my family.