All I Need to Do Is See

As much fun as it is to travel and explore with my husband, I love the routine-ness of our days at home. Cooking, conversation, reading, watching football, doing laundry, writing, sipping tea, and knitting with snow falling and fireplace burning. To name a few.

Simple, routine, mundane, pleasurable tasks and events. Which are significant. Because for a handful of years, I didn’t have a full kitchen or anyone special to cook for.

I didn’t have a washer and dryer in my home.

I didn’t have everyday conversation with a life partner—brainstorming and planning together, running my brilliant ideas past him, benefiting from his insight and wisdom.

There’s this human quality that applies to most people (and by most people, I mean me): All too often I don’t appreciate something of value until it’s gone.

I love how author Shauna Niequist said this:

“Each one of our lives is shot through, threaded in and out with God’s provision, his grace, his protection, but on the average day, we notice it about as much as we really notice gravity.”

The benefit of losing so much is this: it seems that now I’m more in tune with all the goodness around me. But why did it have to take that dry and barren season for my vision to come into clearer focus?

Shauna Niequist goes on to say:

“Just because I have forgotten how to see doesn’t mean it isn’t there. [God’s] goodness is there. His promises have been kept. All I need to do is see.”

I discovered a thing that helps sharpen my focus. And that thing is speaking and writing gratitude, thanking God for this day, for the delightful ordinary things contained within this day. Apricot & Fig candle burning. Taste of homemade clam chowder. Tiny white lights still lighting up the place during this New Year’s week. Rain splattering outside the large windows. Text conversations with grandkids. Music.

David, the shepherd boy who became a king, gives us instructions for the average, common, mundane days:

“This is the day the Lord has made; we will rejoice and be glad in it.” – Psalm 118:24

This thought from Anthony Doerr’s book, Four Seasons in Rome, caught my attention. And I actually tried to picture this scenario:

“Imagine if we only got to see a cumulonimbus cloud or Cassiopeia or a snowfall once a century: there’d be pandemonium in the streets. People would lie by the thousands in the fields on their backs.”

Father in heaven, open our eyes to see the wonders in your creation and the delight of a routine day. Open our eyes to catch a glimpse of how loved we are.