This week my schedule is a bit bare. Well, except for a pesky dentist appointment for me to get a cavity filled. At my age, which I’d like to think is still quite young. Sigh…we won’t go there, but good grief, I feel like I’m twelve or something. Anyways, as I write this and look at a schedule full of white blank days I can feel this sigh of relief.

Less to do.

It’s the ordinary day, really. Normal.

This weekend I was talking with friends about how easy it is to lose perspective on the beauty of normal until normal is gone. I shared about my post – why vacuuming should always be beautiful – and thought about how I, too, had lost sight, once again, in the gift of simply normal. It’s so easy to let the simple things, the little moments, lose the true value of their importance.

Normal gets qualified too often.

It’s just the dishes, just the laundry, just reading a story, just sweeping the floor, just wiping the noses, just running errands, just working, just doing this or that or whatever. There really is no just in front of normal nor is there just in front of mom.

Normal is ordinary.

Normal is beautiful.

But normal can be boring, hard, annoying, challenging, tedious, overwhelming as well. There are still kids to manage, bills to pay, houses to clean, relationships to tend. It’s normal. Ordinary things, ordinary days.

And it all matters.

When I speak about celebrating motherhood I tell a hypothetical story about how when I’m old and sitting on my front porch sipping my sweet tea (with lemon) with begonias around me (I must be moving from Minnesota in my projections of the future) that the things I think I will remember won’t be the huge events – they’ll be the little things. The normal moments in life.

I’ll remember those days spent rocking newborns to sleep in the chair. The times sipping coffee in the morning listening to the laughter from littles sitting on the couch reading. I’ll remember this is the best dinner ever cries or I love you’s that I’m blessed with.

And, I’m guessing, those are the type of things you’ll remember as well.

The normal, everyday, beautiful ordinary things.

Now, I’m not telling you to love every single moment.

As I wrote on facebook this weekend I’m not ever one to endorse putting a faux smile on one’s face and pretending that every single thing is perfect and one to remember. Sometimes sweeping is just sweeping. And laundry is just laundry. And motherhood is just hard. (Those are times to use just). No. I’m about being real. Authentic. Recognizing that there are days, weeks, months where it’s hard. That there are times when motherhood isn’t very likeable. That sometimes you feel like you’re failing. And yet other times you realize how amazing you are and how much you matter. {those are all links – if you need encouragement – please read those.}

What I am telling you, today, is that no matter how you feel about motherhood, or how messy life is, or how fabulous today is, or how ordinary it is – that motherhood is a life changing, life mattering, real life giving thing.

The reason for that image of me in the rocking chair with sweet tea (to which I would add lemon – I know, gasp – but I’m from Minnesota) is that it reminds me to see the beauty in the ordinary.

The kids don’t see the perfect house or perfect mom or perfect routine.

They see the little things.

The beautiful connected life type of things.

They see you in the morning and take comfort in knowing that when they get up you will be there. That matters. They see the dinner on the table – they might not know the struggle you went through to make it – they see dinner. They know clothes will be in the drawers and if not that you’ll dig through the piles of laundry to find that favorite shirt and the matching socks. They know you’ll pick them up after class. They know you’ll help with homework. They know you’ll say good night and tuck them in.

Beautiful. Ordinary. Motherhood things.

And those things are life things.

Life is beautiful in the normal type of things

Remember that today.

~Rachel

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