Seeking Beauty in the Everyday

Today it's the sound of rain blasting down from the heavens and beating on the deck outside; on the glass tabletop, on the galvanized tub that's been out there for three months, on the old wood decking. The other day it was meeting an elderly married couple at a nursing home for my son's Service Learning field trip.  The husband is 91 years old.  His wife visits him there every. single. day.  Most days, it's the natural world in some from or another proclaiming God's glory with every growing thing, every turning leaf, every impossible color.  Also most days, it's my boys' giggles, their funny vocabularies, something they say or do or learn.

Honestly, I am crazed and crazy most of the time.  All twitchy-eyed from listening to the dog bark at nothing all day, all irritable at the bill I missed paying, all grouchy at the kid who is continually falling off his kitchen stool.  I know your pants are slippery but please just stop trying to break yourself.  I aint perfect and I know it.  There's a lot of stuff at which I do not excel.

If there is one thing I am good at, it's finding beauty in the everyday, mundane moments that add up to hours and days and years and life. It's how I'm wired, how I cope, and what I do.  It's why my instagram feed is full of shots of nature. It's why I have a soft spot for poetry.  It's why I love decorating my home and reading about other people decorating theirs.  It's why I have literally filmed sunlight on a white blanket.

I love that stuff.

Love that verse from Ecclesiastes also.  Interestingly, Ecclesiastes 3:11 doesn't stop there but says in its entirety:

He has made everything beautiful in its time.  He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.

We can never fully comprehend our mighty God, but how interesting that he "set eternity" in our hearts--he created us to long for him and the beautiful story he is writing for us and this world. In this life we cannot fully know that story, but I love the idea that maybe we can catch glimpses.  And I love the idea that those glimpses come in the midst of the humble, everyday moments of our lives.

So, that's the project God has called me to in this season. Seeking beauty in the everyday.  Figuring out how to see it, how to appreciate it, how to share it.  Join me, won't you?  You can see where we go here, on Facebook, on Pinterest and on Instagram.