“Receive today’s gift gratefully, unwrapping it tenderly and delving into its depths. As you savor this gift, you find me.” (Excerpt from Jesus Calling, by Sarah Young)
Following the celebration of Mother’s Day, I received an email from my friend, Cora, with a link to the Hachette Book Group site. She had no way of knowing how the subject of the video, a book reading by author Katrina Kenison on The Gift of an Ordinary Day, had already made an impact on my life and my thoughts about motherhood.
A year ago our mutual friend, Kim, handed me her copy with nothing more than the remark, “When I read this book I thought of you and the recent conversations we’ve had. I think you’ll like it.”
Turns out, Kim knew me all too well.
The book was filled with stories that brought awareness to the simple joys of raising my children, reminding me that all too soon my loud and hectic house would be replaced with simple silence and emptiness.
I bought Kim a new book – the one she lent me was dog-eared and underlined and covered with my handwritten thoughts squeezed into side margins. She said she didn’t mind, but I couldn’t part with this copy. It had become part of me as Kenison’s words in print wrapped around my thoughts like a soft blanket, embracing me in loving warmth and peace and newfound insight into my mothering role.
I turned the last page and closed the book, but the significance of its’ message lingers on in my mind.
If you’d ask, “Do you have a favorite passage,” I’d sit down and leaf through each turned corner only to discover I can’t possibly pick just one bright light in a sky full of stars. In one margin I did come across a single word, profound, written next to this passage:
“We have all been so busy – doing our work, growing up, being a family. Soon, it will end. All this striving, accommodating, juggling, will be in the past….And I will miss it all. The beauty that I love is the life that we live, the four of us together, now, this moment, with all its cluttered complexity and inconvenience.”
Find a quiet spot and take a few moments to listen to Katrina Kenison’s book reading at this link: The Gift of an Ordinary Day.
May her words awaken your thoughts to appreciating the gifts of your ordinary day.
