An Ordinary Day: Thankfulness is strange sometimes. We can be surrounded by mercies and hardly notice them. Children running through the house, conversations around the table, laughter coming from another room, people arriving and leaving, stories being told, grandchildren growing almost before your eyes. None of it seems extraordinary while it is happening. It is just another ordinary day in which everyone is simply there. And perhaps that is one of the saddest things about ordinary life is how quickly extraordinary mercies become ordinary expectations.
Our holiday weekend was filled with those things. And as I looked around at my own children, now grown and raising children of their own, I found myself thankful simply to still be part of their lives. It struck me again how easily we can receive some of the greatest gifts of our lives as though they were simply supposed to be there. Perhaps that is why these family moments affect me more now than they once did. When your children are young, you can so easily assume there will always be another meal, another holiday, another afternoon together. Only later do you begin to realize that every gathering is its own kind of mercy.
But there is another mercy I find myself longing for when I look at them – something deeper than another meal, another holiday, or another afternoon together. It is the prayer that, beyond everything I can see and everything I cannot, the Lord might yet be at work in ways hidden from me, bringing them again and again to that old promise I have loved for so many years: that those who call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
Something happened yesterday that brought some of these thoughts back to me in an entirely different way. We stopped for a little while at a large community playground, and while we were there, we met the sweetest little five-year-old girl. She had just turned five. She was a twin, and she had ridden her bicycle to the park with her mother and sisters. When she came over and removed her bicycle helmet, we realized that she had no hair.
Immediately, your heart sinks. Her two sisters went off to play, but this little girl wanted to talk. And talk she did. She came over and began telling us that she had just turned five, showing us the stuffed animal she had received, and telling us one thing after another with the kind of excitement only a five-year-old can have. And all the while I found myself thinking, Oh Lord, please be merciful to this little girl. Please bring her back to health.
There has always been something about suffering in little children that I have found especially difficult. Perhaps part of it is because our own family has been spared so much. Six children, grandchildren everywhere now, and comparatively little serious illness. And when you suddenly find yourself standing beside a five-year-old child going through chemotherapy, it does something to you. It makes you think about how casually we receive so many mercies. How much time we spend irritated over things that do not matter. How easily our lives become centered around ourselves. How often we complain about an ordinary day without realizing what an extraordinary mercy such a day can be.
Eventually her mother came over, and I asked the question that had been sitting in my mind. “Is she going to be okay?” She began telling us what had happened. What started with a doctor’s visit eventually led to the discovery of tumors. Her daughter has been receiving chemotherapy for quite some time, and there are still uncertainties about what lies ahead. And yet there was such kindness in the way her mother spoke. No bitterness. No complaints. Just a mother patiently telling us what her little girl had been through while that same little girl stood nearby, delighted that she was five years old and holding tightly to her stuffed animal.
I have thought about her several times since we left. And I have thought about thankfulness. Not the kind we manufacture because we know we are supposed to be thankful, but the kind that comes when something suddenly opens our eyes to mercies that have been sitting in front of us all along. Another birthday. A healthy child running across a playground. A family gathered around a table. A conversation with someone we love. Another morning. Another ordinary day.
Of course, I know that “an ordinary day” does not look the same for everyone. Some who read this have known far more suffering than our family has – long illnesses, hospital rooms, children who were never well, loved ones who did not recover, grief that became part of the landscape of life. I do not want to romanticize suffering or suggest that thankfulness somehow removes its weight. But perhaps those who have walked through those places understand, in ways the rest of us may never fully understand, just how precious an ordinary day can be. Perhaps that is when the smallest things begin to feel anything but small. Sometimes one uneventful afternoon, one good report, one meal together, or simply having the people you love in the room can become almost unbearably precious.
And perhaps that is also where we are reminded of our limits. There are things no gratitude can explain away and no amount of love can fix. There are moments when the enormous questions of life become very small and very personal. You cannot explain everything. You cannot fix everything. You cannot make promises about what tomorrow will bring. Sometimes you can only ask God for mercy. And perhaps that is not such a small thing after all.
So today I find myself praying for a little five-year-old girl whose name I’ve already forgotten, and praying for six grown children whose lives now extend far beyond what I can see or know. And I find myself thankful – deeply thankful – for another ordinary day in which so many of the people I love were simply here. LORD, please be merciful to us all. MPJ