“How do you carry on, when you carry something that you’ll probably carry for life?”
In Africa, dawn is the color of birdsong and the day wakes brilliant. But this morning the memory of my friend’s question hangs heavy and dark in the half-light of the sunrise.
I carry her question quietly through an ordinary, blistering day. Late afternoon, we decide to hang the Christmas lights. I stand on an ordinary dining room chair to reach up with ordinary zip ties to fix strings of ordinary lights bought at our ordinary supermarket. We have ordinary windows that look out onto an ordinary street.
But something happens when we hang Christmas lights. Something extraordinary.
My boys catch the magic. They drip from the pool in wet shorts and climb the burglar bars to help keep the tension as I tighten the strings. The lights dance offbeat and we laugh cranberry cookie crumbs onto the kitchen table and a storm brews black. Spectacular thunder splits the sky wide. Clouds cool and crack — flash — rumble deep. And burst torrents. Our lights in the windows glisten through rain but are no match for this electric summer sky that pours a big, loud, extraordinary gospel.
And through the storm my friend’s desperate question keeps sounding — about how we carry on, carrying the tension. Because in one hand is the truth that we serve an extraordinary God. And in the other hand is the truth that we live ordinary lives.
Our extraordinary God is mighty to save, mighty to heal, mighty to restore and renew. Our ordinary lives are uncertain, unfair, difficult and sometimes devastating. How does the extra fit into the ordinary?
Our eldest son is visually impaired. Fact: God could heal him. Fact: God hasn’t healed him. Both are true. We live strung out by the tension.
And we all carry things, right? Things we may carry for life. Singleness, infertility, disease, trauma, or soul shrapnel sustained in the ordinary crazy.
And it’s possible that, earth-side, we’ll never even see why we carry what we carry. How do ordinary arms hold such heavy truth?
The storm breaks the tension of thick heat. I watch my boys, watching the lights. They’re mesmerised by the wonder of our small flickering in just this small corner of the planet. We’re declaring that this ordinary home is a place of extraordinary peace, because Christ is King. We’re declaring that we will celebrate, despite the darkness, the majesty of a King born low beneath stars He flung.
And I think how maybe we don’t have to carry the tension after all. Because in Christ, all things hold together. And in Him we live and move and have our being. So if we’re in Him, and He holds all things — then we don’t have to do the holding at all. He never promised us that He would make all the uneven things, even, in this lightning quick life. He promised us that the world would be a hard place to live, and He promised us that He had overcome it. Both are true. We rest in a beautiful tension.
So maybe I need to call my friend to tell her — and me, and you — that finding the extra in the ordinary and being extraordinary women who carry on despite carrying things we may carry for life is about what we do with the pain, confusion, fear, and disappointment of ordinary life — how we turn it into worship.
That’s what makes us extraordinary reflections of our extraordinary God.
And maybe, to find the extra in the ordinary this Christmas and always, we need to be brave enough to keep on stringing up the lights, not in spite of the tension but because of it. The tension, after all, is how we string up extraordinary beauty.
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Related: With splashes of glimmer and a delightful design on every star, decorate your home this Christmas with this charming Star Garland.
Leave a Comment
Shirley says
What a beautiful reminder, thank you Dalene! Your writing always inspires and encourages me!
Dalene Reyburn says
Thank you, friend. Reminding you and me both… 🙂 So much love to you.
Keri Siegel says
Darlene, I love what you wrote and I get the point; but I’d like to offer you and your family some encouragement. This may help others too. Isaiah 55 tells us, “He WAD wounded for our transgressions, He WAS bruised for our iniquities, the chastisement of our peace WAS upon Him, and by His stripes we WERE healed.” It’s PAST TENSE. It was finished at the Cross. It’s ALREADY done. Just because we haven’t seen it YET doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened. We have to receive it in the spiritual realm before it ever manifests in the natural. We may or may not see the manifestation this side of Heaven. That doesn’t change anything. I was diagnosed with epilepsy before I was two years old. It’s something I’ve had to deal with my entire life. I had a seizure at my best friend’s house JUST LAST NIGHT (on Thanksgiving Day, of all days). That doesn’t change anything because epilepsy is just what I deal with. It’s a part of me, but it’s not my identity because I have received my healing in the spiritual realm; and whether or not I see the manifestation of that on earth, I will continue to trust God and believe that He has already completed the work. I am healed NO MATTER WHAT my body does and SO IS your oldest son. Be blessed.
Dalene Reyburn says
Oh wow, I love that – the truth that it’s already DONE, because Jesus took it to the cross.. Thank you so much for that encouragement, Keri!
J says
Hi Anna! I thank God and you for these words. Your statement that removing our sufferings removes our empathy hit me this morning as I have asked God to remove the suffering that I go through. I remember now that this suffering is a gift that grows that empathy, the potential His has placed in us, our faith, to share in His sufferings. It truly is saying not my will but Yours be done. May He bless you always 🙂
Anna Smit says
So encouraged to read your words and see how God has blessed you. It’s not an easy path, that’s for sure, but He is with us in it, multiplying our suffering into blessings for others.
Dalene Reyburn says
Yes indeed… love that reminder of Isaiah 53…! Thank you Anna!
Beth Williams says
Darlene,
We carry on through the shed blood of Jesus Christ! He can and will heal us-in His perfect timing. I believe He allows trials and pain to bring us closer to Him. Each trial we go through we call upon Him for strength to get through!
Blessings 🙂
Dalene Reyburn says
Thanks so much Beth… So appreciate the encouragement! Every blessing to you! Dalene
Jill Kinahan says
Wonderful, deep reflections from your readers!. I also have to say that your skill and inspiration with seeing the extraordinary in the ordinary is a characteristic of your writing that unfolds like the depth of meaning in the proverbs. You look at the surface, ponder – and then show us the marvel. Then the skill with linking ideas – the tension of the storm, the string of lights, the little boy in his wet shorts clinging to the burglar bars, to be healed or not to be healed, to be suspended between earth and heaven, and to realize that that’s how it was divinely meant to be. Just beautiful. Thank you.
Dalene Reyburn says
Thank you dear Jill! May you know His extraordinary strength for this season too!