When I joined my blogging mastermind group, I hooked up with a bunch of women who challenge me in many aspects of my life. Johanna is a jewel, and I really like her writing style. I am pretty sure if we lived closer to each other, we'd be good IRL friends.
Johanna is a wife, mom to three, and newly homeschooler. She blogs at My Home Tableau about living intentionally, thinking biblically, and keeping life and home simple. Check out her blog (here).
Thanks, Johanna, for sharing your thoughts with us today....
In the 6 years my husband and I have been married, we've lived in 5 homes in 4 different states. To say that we've embraced "change" and "unknown" is an understatement. They practically identify who we are. Currently my husband is a Seminary student and will be finishing up his degree in May. We are again faced with what will inevitably be change. But that's really not the hard part. The more difficult thing is the big unknown. I don't often think of myself as someone who always lives for the future--until that future is uncertain. Then I realize it grates at every nerve. I feel like I don't even know how to clean my house, or plan my homeschool calendar, or even plan my own goals. How in the world can I plan, when we don't know what the plan is? I'm a planner. I love planning, making lists, and detailing out exactly how things are going to go. Unless, that is, I have no idea what's going to happen with our lives.
I realized that I actually do often live for the next thing. As soon as one holiday is over, my mind is reeling with plans for then next one. As soon as I get through one birthday, I'm already trying to figure out what kind of cake to decorate for the next. As soon as I get through breakfast, I'm thinking about just making it to lunch. And then just get through until Daddy comes home. The next thing. I'm always shooting for the next thing. Whether it is the next thing in the day or the next big thing in life. As a Christian I shouldn't live for today. I'm ultimately living for a future home in heaven. But I need to learn to embrace today. My kids have taught me time and time again that life is lived in ordinary moments. But so often I go through the day hardly paying a moments notice to those ordinary things that make up my life.
God ordained for life to be lived in the mundane. While I like planning and thinking ahead, most of life is still washing dishes, cleaning my home, embracing the needs of my children, looking out for them both physically and emotionally, teaching, etc. Life is mundane. It is when I grasp the mundanity of life, that I sense my frustration with an unknown future begin to lessen. Does it really matter where we'll be in six months? My kids will be six months older and will have slightly different needs, but yet life will be very much the same. Ordinary and mundane. And ordinary and mundane is beautiful. It is worshipful. I bring glory to God in every mundane task as I embrace it and fulfill it to the best of my ability. When I start to fret or worry about the future, I embrace today. My little ones, my home, my husband. I embrace the duties I have and give myself to fulfilling them to the best of my ability today. And then tomorrow I'll do the same. And in six months? I'll do the same then too. It just might be in another physical location.
Whatever your mundane life entails, embrace it. That is what God has ordained for you. Today.
