Ordinary Miracles

Hey Girls,

Today we celebrated our annual birth-iversary. Both Clara’s 5th birthday and Dad’s and my 14th wedding anniversary.

I could share with you some big, lofty ideas about love and marriage and choosing a partner who has qualities like Dad (well, most of them), or maybe qualities like me 😉, about not getting married or committing too young, or about all the things I’ve learnt so far from being married.

But I’m not going to. One, because I don’t really think I have that much to share. I’m figuring it out as I go, to be honest. Fourteen years in, I’m not exactly sure what I think and feel about marriage, allowing life to teach me what it needs to. Second, because you’re you and I’m me, and you’re going to do what you decide to do. Your life lessons will be yours to learn and live and whatever you choose I’ll stand beside you (maybe a step behind). And last, because the future is uncertain, we don’t ever know where life will take us, and it’s quite possible that as I/we flow with life, what I might write here today very likely will change.

I also could tell you stories about the frigid, blustery day we got married; the curdled shots we served our guests, the distress when the priest told us we had to greet the guests as they came into the church and not getting to experience the whole “no seeing the bride until the altar” thing that actually turned out to be amazing. Papa and North Papa driving to a small town to pick up the Ukrainian wedding bread from a Baba and they never were willing to tell us how much she charged. The smashed plates and frozen flowers, the huge Christmas tree we dragged into the hall, or the speeches … the unplanned speech from a groomsmen who had one too many rum and eggnogs that turned out to be a very loving story of his friendship with Dad, Nana not being able to finish her speech through tears, and stories of your dad’s attempt at a romantic proposal that failed due to my refusal to do what he wanted me to. People that I invited because I thought their attendance showed they were my friends (when most likely they were enjoying the free bar), people who I didn’t get enough time to visit with and how if I were to do it again, it would be a fraction of the size, in an outdoor location, with no tulle.

But none of that matters anymore. There are memories, stories that I remember and recall, some I cherish others I cringe, but not ones I dwell on, it’s a record of a past version of me, who in so many ways, doesn’t even feel like she exists anymore.

And so, I’ll save you … this time 😉.

But I do have something I want to share with you. A seed from that day that feels relevant to today. As I danced around the kitchen with Dad (okay mostly by myself) to the song we danced to at our wedding, I marvelled in our today, and the poetry and wisdom of the song…

Ordinary Miracle 
Sarah McLachlan

It's not that unusual
When everything is beautiful
It's just another ordinary miracle today

The sky knows when it's time to snow
Don't need to teach a seed to grow
It's just another ordinary miracle today

Life is like a gift they say
Wrapped up for you everyday
Open up and find a way
To give some of your own

Isn't it remarkable?
Like every time a rain drop falls
It's just another ordinary miracle today

Birds in winter have their fling
But always make it home by spring
It's just another ordinary miracle today

When you wake up everyday
Please don't throw your dreams away
Hold them close to your heart
'Cause we're all a part
Of the ordinary miracle

Ordinary miracle

Do you want to see a miracle?

It seems so exceptional
That things just work out afterall
It's just another ordinary miracle today

Sun comes up and shines so bright
And disappears again at night
It's just another ordinary miracle today

It's just another ordinary miracle today

Today. On this day when we all woke up to the beauty of the fluorescent pink of the rising sun, where Clara’s only wants for her birthday were to watch a movie, eat a wrap, play outside and have tech time, where we had visits with a friend and decorated cookies, where the cat played with a gift box and our hearts each beat probably around 100, 000 times and the light of the day got the teeniest of a fraction longer, because this earth we all live on is orbiting a sun out in a galaxy and universe beyond that which we can even fathom.

Ordinary Miracles.

Not taking things for granted – it sounds so easy. It is the deepest awareness practice that I could possibly have in my life, and it takes work, and over and over again returning to remembering.What we take for granted would knock our socks off. We could barely leave the house. We would be so in awe of how much there is that is a marvel about our bodies. Simply waking up, getting out of a bed, wherever we’re sleeping, and getting ourselves to the next place could render us awestruck by what the body is doing at all times. By our hearts, by our minds, and all that they can hold, literally the practice of taking nothing for granted is the radical practice of noticing every day, in every moment, and returning to that noticing. This is really what grateful living is: returning to the noticing of all that is sufficient. All that is extraordinary. All that already is in our lives – enough to take our breaths away – and using that to help us get through life in a way, through difficulty, through challenge…uplifted, enamored.
-Kristi Nelson

The ordinary that is truly extraordinary, the moments we often (me included) don’t notice, can dismiss, lament, take for granted until the gifts of the ordinary becomes what we would give anything for …

And so on this day of celebration of years past, where milestones and big moments in a marriage or childhood are honoured, and I’ll continue to bake cakes and hide gifts, I am reminded, and really want to share with you to take nothing for granted, to see and find the gift of each day. Celebrate the seemingly mundane, the ordinary, the water coming from the tap, what our bodies do on the toilet (oh yes I did 💩💩), the hugs in passing, wishing each other good night, the laughter of a joke, laying under the stars, sitting at the table eating chicken fingers and a bought birthday cake, playing in the snow, and you being able to read these words … as ordinary miracles.

The fact of being here another day opens us to surprise. Every single day we’re alive opens us to surprise. And every year opens us to zillions of surprises.

Cultivate perspective … remember in the middle of a moment how much privilege we have, or how precious and fleeting life is, or how big the world is, how much we belong, how much we make a difference.

I’m reminded of the childrens book “I’m in Charge of Celebrations” by Byrd Baylor, about a young girl living in the desert. When asked if she ever gets lonely she replies, “ How could I be lonely? I’m the one in charge of celebrations.”

Last year I gave myself one hundred and eight celebrations…I keep a notebook and I write the date and then I write about the celebration…You can tell what’s worth a celebration because your heart will POUND and you’ll feel like you’re standing on top of a mountain and you’ll catch your breath like you were breathing some new kind of air.”

– Byrd Baylor

So I hope you’ll notice. Notice, wonder and celebrate what John O’Donohue calls the simplicity and wonder of each sacred day. Celebrate your belonging. Your body. Your mind. Your connection to all things and every one. This earth. Your selves. Each other. Each day. A smile. A breath. A wink. The blue sky and the warmth of the sun on your face. The way headlights make the snow sparkle. And as the sun sets and the sky once again turns pink, ask yourself, what were the gifts in this day? Why was I gifted this day? And resolve to always find at least one. For even in the hard and the painful, there are gifts to be found.

Ordinary Miracles.

Isn’t it remarkable?

And if you wouldn’t mind, since we are human after all, giving me a nudge or a kick when I forget. Because while I write this to you, I also write for myself.

I love you. Thank you for the gift of millions of ordinary miracles. You are extraordinary.

PS I’ve read this poem to you several times and keep one in my jacket pocket and by my nightstand.

A normal day! Holding it in my hand this one last moment, I have come to see it as more than an ordinary rock, it is a gem, a jewel. In time of war, in peril of death, people have dug their hands and faces into the earth and remembered this. In time of sickness and pain, people have buried their faces in pillows and wept for this. In time of loneliness and separation, people have stretched themselves taut and waited for this. In time of hunger, homelessness, and wants, people have raised bony hands to the skies and stayed alive for this.

Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, savor you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it will not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky, and want more than all the world your return. And then I will know what now I am guessing: that you are, indeed, a common rock and not a jewel, but that a common rock made of the very mass substance of the earth in all its strength and plenty puts a gem to shame.
- Mary Jean Irion

Until Next Time …

Mom