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December 27 – Ordinary Joy
Our most profound joy is often experienced during ordinary moments.
What was one of your most joyful ordinary moments this year?
(Author: Brené Brown)
Chris and I visited the Carl Sandburg home in Flat Rock, NC last year for our anniversary. Besides the books that cover almost every wall and surface, we were most interested in the dining room. Our guide told us that the dinners in the home would last for several hours. Everyone on tour with us was incredulous … except us.
Dinners that last several hours are very common for us. We eat, we talk, we eat a bit more and talk and talk and talk. Sometimes I just sit back and listen. The kids have aged to a point that now they are beginning to tattle on themselves about some of the things they did that I didn’t know about.
“Hey do you remember the time we put Drew in a plastic bin and pushed him down the slide?”
“I loved playing hide and seek in the dark whenever Amber was babysitting”
“Yeah, yeah .. it was Noah that wrote Stephens initials on the bathroom wall to get him in trouble”
The stories run long, the jokes come fast and furious and the teasing is inevitable.
And those are the moments that I look around that table and my heart just about bursts with joy. So simple but SO grand.
I’m a fellow Reverber (new word?) seeking out others for inspiration and community. When it’s very cold out, I tend to isolate myself.
I think anytime I discover joy, it’s not ordinary. It turns ordinary moments into special ones. A moment of ordinary joy for me was when my sons showed me their Santa letters. They were so heartfelt and honest.
Patti, beautiful thought! Imagine how radically different our lives would be if we defined joyful moments as extrordinary.