A Grief Journey: The Gift of the Ordinary

"We often miss what is important on the quest for extraordinary." Brene Brown

I am a person of routine. I like making lists and checking off the things accomplished. I even write lists of things I’ve already done just to check them off. You too?

Well perhaps your day includes making breakfast, paying a bill online, getting an oil change, the drop off line and lists upon lists of to-dos. Ordinary life consists of things like grocery lists, school and church event calendars and family vacations.

Just last year I longed for the ordinary. The struggles of normal life of juggling work, home and ministry felt a million miles away. I was sitting in the cardiac intensive care unit day after day, hour after hour for months. Today I wouldn’t exchange a single second of that time with my son for anything spectacular much less something ordinary. But, some days sitting in that sterile, fluorescent-lite hospital room, I would dream of simple days of needing to mow the grass and run to the grocery store. These tasks don’t disappear when your child is hospitalized but they certainly don’t matter the way they once did.

Right after losing our son, the ordinary tasks of “adulting” were nearly impossible. Trying to write simple emails or texts took herculean mind power.  Yet I wanted the ordinary. I wanted to be normal and to be able to go to the grocery store without feeling out of body and in a fog.

I remember standing among strangers feeling as though I had come back from war and all my wounds were covered by my clothing. They didn’t know where I had been, what I had seen, what I had lost or that my wounds were so fresh that some were still bleeding through the hidden bandages. I wanted to run or scream or stop them and tell them, “Do you know where I’ve been? Do you know there’s a war? Do you know they are dying?” But, I just stood there observing the ordinary; life happening all around me.

Choosing fresh fruit

Checking the mail

Tying a shoe

Chasing after the bus

Scolding a child

Holding hands

Looking back over the months spent with our son, I realized there was a around a three month period where the only places I went were our apartment and the hospital. I stopped communication with everyone but my husband, my sons and the doctors/nurses. I only knew the war. All I could bear was the war; the war my son was fighting to stay alive. It was his fight but I was in the war with him. There was no ordinary.

It’s been around 400 days since we left the war. It’s not over and is still going on in that same hospital room. It’s a new child now because our son is done. Our son will no longer know the war and he will never know the ordinary.

I wish he got to know the ordinary for just a little while. Soccer games, Sunday school, crushes on little girls, playing with his big brother and bath time. But, really…are those memories ordinary?

The way I think is different now that I’m outside the war. When I’m observing every day, ordinary life I wonder things like,

“Are those her only two children or does she have more in heaven like I do?”

“Oh, she’s about 6 months pregnant. Oh Jesus, please knit that baby together with a full heart.”

“I can only imagine what it would be like with two wild toddler boys to running around this little town home! I might be crazy by now!”

I’ve realized that all the little things we do that make up this ordinary life really aren’t all that ordinary. Ordinary means commonplace, normal, standard. My special son taught me that at the end of the day nothing is truly ordinary. Doing laundry, going to work, caring for our homes, giving to the church, sharing our hearts, completing those to-do lists every week become extraordinary when we consider them as acts of love and ways to build lasting memories.

For example, a few weeks ago my son was playing in Chick Fil A with several little girls. Up the slide and down the slide. Squeals heard for miles. Seemingly so ordinary. No wounds visible to the outside. Yet, our big boy has lost his little brother and those little girls had lost their dad just a few days earlier. Simple playing. Hidden wounds. So extraordinary.

I can no longer do a task in and of itself without connecting it to the larger purpose of my life to love and serve others. Sometimes I still unload the dishwasher on autopilot but when I lay my head down at night, I think about the war. His war. My war wounds are still not visible to those around me. I’m sure your wounds are also hidden. So let’s remember together that life is not commonplace. There is always a bigger story going on in the lives of those around us. Let’s step into the ordinary of others’ lives to find the extraordinary; perhaps engaging deeply enough in hopes to stop the hidden bleeding. Let’s invest in others’ hearts by sharing our own wounds.

I’ve realized my strong son and the grief we have endured has exposed me to the gift of the ordinary and for that I am thankful.

“The most extraordinary thing in the world is an ordinary man and an ordinary woman and their ordinary children.” ― G.K. Chesterton