It happens to a lot of moms: somewhere between the 2 am feedings, reading Good Night Moon for the 57th time, and schlepping to and from soccer, dance, and band practice, we look around and sigh at the sheer ordinariness of mothering.
Bonnie: I admit that although I very much wanted my children and was grateful for the ability to raise them at home, it was often tough looking at some of my friends without kids, their travel and important careers, while a day in my life was a series of feeding, waste management, and household tasks. Rinse and repeat.
Renee: It’s a common refrain we hear from a lot of women who “lose themselves” while raising children. They’re saying, “I have an advanced degree. Am I actually accomplishing anything here?” I always tell them their education is never wasted! It makes them better at all aspects of life, even if it may not feel like it when they’re wrestling with the Diaper Genie.
There’s a lovely, little tucked-away verse in 1 Thessalonians (4:11):
“…make it your ambition to lead a quiet life: you should mind your own business and work with your hands, just as we told you.”
Bonnie: A quiet life? That seems like a fairly mediocre ambition, doesn’t it? What happened to aiming for the stars? Living your #bestlife? But, oops, I think that may be Paul’s point here, to jolt us back into the present, the “ordinary” here and now.
Renee: The traditional liturgical church calendar includes something I love called Ordinary Time. In between the big, colorful holidays of Easter and Christmas, Advent and Lent, there are these long stretches–months–where nothing special happens. But these stretches actually reveal the richness of knowing Christ in and through life’s everyday realities.
The traditional readings from the Gospels during this time are beefy. It’s where we come alongside our Savior and learn humility over pride, vulnerability over power. We see His self-giving love and caring for the least of these.
Bonnie: When you look at Christ the way you describe that, it sounds an awful lot like how we’re pruned and shaped over seasons of motherhood. Although it seems counterintuitive, Ordinary Time is where all the greatest stuff happens. It’s where relationships form and deepen, where we learn what love actually looks like, and what it feels like to be completely willing to lay down self for someone else.
I’ve seen a real shift from relishing the ordinary and recognizing its importance to an infatuation with what seems extraordinary. We now live in a hyper-performative culture with everything–at least all our best bits–on display and proffered for approval. It’s not enough to simply enjoy an excellent meal; it must first be photographed and captioned.
Renee: Exactly. The comparison game pushes us towards the extraordinary until it bleeds into every area. The implication is that every trip, event, holiday, photo, meal and outfit must be good enough for the Gram, or it doesn’t really “count.” Before booking a vacation, you’d better google “top 10 instagrammable locations” for wherever you’re headed to be sure that week away is worth your time. Ordinary has become a bad word.
Bonnie: In 2021, Rainesford Stauffer wrote a book called An Ordinary Age: Finding Your Way in a World that Expects Exceptional, and she writes about that very thing. She focuses on young adults, our grown kids in their 20’s, who are supposed to be at a place where anything is possible, but they’re living in a culture that defines life with these unattainable parameters. She laments being part of a whole generation who finds it “beside the point” to ask big questions about what makes a meaningful life because they’re so busy striving for constant pinnacles of extraordinary.
Renee: You know what I find so interesting? I’m now seeing a bit of a pendulum swing in the generation above that, 30 somethings with children. There’s some slowing down, an impulse to savor more, to clear the schedule and calendar to make time for spouses and children, to appreciate the snow days stuck at home, to go back to some of the simpler ways of doing life–making a garden, having sourdough starter.
Bonnie: Maybe it’s a result of maturity and growth? Having experienced five decades of life now, and seeing how short life can be certainly forces you to take stock of what’s important and real. You see pretty quickly it has nothing at all to do with shiny objects, perfect brows, or earned titles. I no longer have grandparents or parents, and my own nest is empty. The most perfect day I could imagine would be having the grown kids all home and content, laughing around the table. A pretty “ordinary” scene, but one I’d trade all the instagrammable moments for.
Renee: Amen to that. I’d add that it’s not only life experience that leads you to this place, but also the intentional practice of gratitude and focus on small moments of beauty in the mundane. If we can condition ourselves to pause, even for the briefest of moments, in the middle of the overwhelm and the urge to perform, our eyes might open to what’s right in front of us. Give us eyes to see and ears to hear. Someone important once said that.
Bonnie: I’ve seen some of the return to simpler, more ordinary ways of life, too, but ironically, even that can put pressure on moms who don’t have backyard chickens or what have you because the culture’s always pushing in, eager to make us hit that “strive” button.
Renee: Since the 70’s, we’ve certainly seen a push for women to “have it all,” do it all, be it all. And now it’s intensified to do all that AND make sure you’re doing it all extraordinarily. We need to be able to pause and ask what exactly IS this “all” we’re after before we go striving ourselves to exhaustion and anxiety for it.
Bonnie: It’s not likely the “quiet life of working with our hands.”
Renee: “Ruined for the ordinary” can mean that once our eyes are opened and we see the world as it is (as scripture reveals it to us), we’re never the same. The normal, everyday things that excite the world and all the approval that the world has to offer will all at once mean nothing. We recognize it as the flimsy, fleeting substitute that it is. It will be as the Apostle Paul described it in Philippians 3:9: “Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ.”
In light of our conversation here, perhaps it might also mean that we should renew our view of the ordinary and revisit the holiness that resides there.
Bonnie: There’s a fantastic essay by Jeremy Jones, which is essentially an obituary for his grandfather. He writes, “When the notable figures of our day pass away, they wind up on our screens, short clips documenting their achievements, talking heads discussing their influence. The quiet lives, though, pass on soundlessly in the background. And yet those are the lives in our skin, guiding us from breakfast to bed. They’re the lives that have made us, that keep the world turning.”
The things we miss when we lose someone are the ordinary, “throw-away” things. Someone to zip the back of your dress. Someone who knows your favorite coffee mug and how you like your coffee. What makes a marriage deep and rich aren’t the highlights. It’s having someone bear witness to all the facets of your life, especially the routine, boring, “ordinary” ones.
Pacifiers, car seats, and baby wipes can be some of the holiest things there are when we see the “ordinary” work of mothering as the profound and meaningful gift that it is.