Slow Growth Equals Strong Roots by Mary MarantzUzorak

The Miracle Among the Mundane

Somewhere among the mortgage payments and stainless-steel appliances, the retirement funds, and the endless piles of laundry, we lose the wonder for a life we have spent a lifetime dreaming of.

I used to sit with a blue spiral-bound notebook outside the trailer where I grew up in West Virginia, drawing sketches and dreaming of the real house I would one day have. Now all I’m tempted to see is a kitchen that needs updating, perpetually dirty dishes, and a boiler in the basement that—if all its coughs and sputterings are any indication—we’re going to need to replace soon.

We’re numb. We’re checked out of our own lives. And we’re not even sure we would recognize that untamed version of ourselves if she came and sat down on the couch beside us with her skinned knees and tangled hair, looked us right in our exhausted eyes that are mirror reflections of her own, and asked the question we’ve been asking ourselves for far too long now: “What happened to you?”

I once heard a photographer named Will Jacks say, “Be willing to walk among the fireflies.” I took that to mean be willing to slow down, be willing to see the smallest things right in front of you as the miracles they are. The splendor and the wonder of every lily in the field.

Becoming an adult tends to put blinders on us. It makes us forget to see the things right in front of us that used to give us pause.

It takes a radical act of courage to see beauty among the broken. But it is no less radical or courageous to witness the miracle among the mundane.

Perhaps this is the antidote to the problem of wanting to do and be more: noticing the magic and enoughness of all that we already have.

God, I don’t want to wake up one day and realize I’ve sleepwalked through my life. I don’t want to spend another day pretending like every piece of this life is anything less than extraordinary. You care enough to give me a home and sunsets, a song that can bring me right back to my childhood, fluffy dogs and cold tangerines. I want to see every good gift from above for the miracle it really is. Wake me up, God. Help me to not miss it. Amen.