Quote of the Week No. 1 came from the lips of my 8-year-old, Scott:
‘Mom, you must never become an underwear model. You have to wear your bra and panties and be on a poster at the shops. It’s just dodgy.’
Oh well. There goes another dream.
NOT!
Seriously –
I’m amazed this boy still thinks I’m cool enough to be in his band. He even thinks I can cut it as a stunt double. And now he’s taken it upon himself to steer my destiny away from any hopes of being lace-clad on a catwalk.
Fellow mom, carrying the softness and the cellulite that happened to you because humans lived inside your body:
Incredibly, those humans think you’re hot! And worthy of dignity and respect.
Let’s not give up on casting vision for the generation we’re raising, so that in a future that will outlast us there’ll be men who love their wives and moms and daughters and sisters with untainted, unadulterated affection and admiration.
Shooting for any standard lower than that would be, well, just dodgy.
Then my friend Liz East shared with me how she believes we’ll see an outbreak of the power of God in the extraordinary ordinary.
‘God is going to anoint and elevate the commonplace,’ she wrote. ‘The ordinary – the open home that welcomes the stranger and the lonely; the long, happy, ordered, stable marriage; men and women thriving in the spacious place that God has created for them; children nurtured with present parents and growing into whole, God-loving adults.’
And the clincher – and Quote of the Week No. 2 –
‘This extraordinary ordinary will be a weapon of war against the enemy and a banner of hope for the lost and broken.’
Because in a wrecked world of bent boundaries and crazy depravity and moms-turned-lingerie-models, the regular stuff that feels boring and untrendy has grown disarmingly beautiful in its normalcy, stability, wholesomeness, unusualness. And it’s in these counter-cultural, startling grace-rhythms that God will continue to rock the world, and build His church.
Again, let’s not give up. Let’s not forget the seismic power of a long, seemingly unremarkable obedience in the same direction – so we can say with Isaiah:
‘Here am I and the children God has given me. We are signs and wonders of the Lord God in Israel.’
Quote of the Week No. 3 is attributed to my friend Gareth Simpson:
‘It’s just a busy season. Just this season from life to death. After that, I’ve got high hopes that things will calm down.’
Gareth said this to me in the school car park. He was joking. But not really.
It made me wonder if all my busy-busy end-of-year talk of fatigue and needing to tap out is just a cultural construct and I kind of collapse into it the moment Pick ‘n Pay puts up its Christmas decorations. (You know, like, late August.)
We absolutely do all have a lot going on. We absolutely do all get tired. And we absolutely do all need to rest.
But we needn’t buy the lie that exhaustion excuses bad behaviour, or allows us to abdicate responsibility, or gives us licence to be unkind.
Jim Rohn reckons we’re the average of the five people we spend the most time with. Who are they, and what do they talk about? If they’re always projecting their frantic vibes – guess what we’ll become?
We’re shaped by the language we use more than by the busyness of life.
So – life is busy, sure. But maybe it needn’t be quite as busy as we tell ourselves it is.
. . .
Happy weekend, lovely person! Rest well.
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Dalene Reyburn 