It is that season where we look back and look forward. A time when we talk about our best times over the last year and our worst times. A time when we talk about and make plans for the future.
I’ve been reading Josh Luke Smith’s thoughts which he has been sending out each day since 1st Jan. This verse struck me from the poem he shared
We must not define our lives by our worst days, and neither should we by our best; most of life is in the middle.
Joshua Luke Smith – This is the main event
This photograph I’ve shared is from a walk my husband, daughter, my dog and myself did yesterday. It was an ordinary walk along and ordinary beach. We talked about ordinary things then went to the pub. Ordinary
Neither of my children could make it up for Christmas. 2nd January was the first time my daughter was able to come and has managed to be with us for the whole week. But she’s tired after working all through December, over Christmas and over New Year in hospitality. She’s tired and needs a bit of family downtime. We’ve done a lot of sitting about and chatting. One afternoon her and the dog fell asleep on the couch whilst I was reading. We did one day where we went out to lunch so she could get a new coat. But it was all low key. All ordinary. It was life lived in the middle point between best and worst.
But as Josh says in all his writings for this year – and it is a phrase he uses often – it is the ordinary that is the “main event”. If we spend our time waiting for the amazing or even wallowing in the awful we will miss out on so much. God promises to be with us ALL the time.
Yes God promises to be with us when things get tough and life is awful and when we need to be enfolded in their loving arms. God promises to rejoice with us when things are amazing and shout with us. Though often in the great times, and even in the good times, we forget to acknowledge God. But God is with us ALWAYS.
With this in my head it is helping me realise to just acknowledge God in the washing up, in the deep cleaning the kitchen which I did this morning because husband and daughter have gone for hike in the sunshine that has miraculously appeared over North Wales. I have got good at remembering to praise God for the beauty in my local park but this whole thing of remembering that actually it is the life we live day in day which is our “main event“, which is our lives, is something to be grasped
I suppose it is what mindfulness is deep down, but often that has been turned into a “thing.” – eg “I am being mindful” or whatever. But this is just knowing that all my life, whether good, bad, indifferent, whether mindful or forgetful, all of this is my life. All of this is the main event of my life.
Aspirational Adventures 