Notes from where I'd rather be

This August, I find myself longing to be in Cornwall. Or Cork. Or some other picturesque Northern Hemisphere location populated by smiling locals with lilting accents. 

I can't pinpoint the exact moment this longing appeared; perhaps it emerged as a response to this post or after receiving pictures of my friend, Charlotte, traipsing through the British countryside. 

Whatever the reasons and whenever the exact moment of its emergence, this longing has kept me company over a few dreary weeks in Auckland. While sitting through dry lectures and navigating the muddy, mossy steps leading up to my house in the pouring rain, I have plotted my escape.

I want to be at the beach! I want to be picnicking in the countryside wearing dresses from Rouje! I want to be reading stacks of novels all day, emerging from them just long enough to reach for a sandwich! 

In my lower moments, I satiate the longing somewhat by jumping ahead two and a half years, to when I'll have my teaching registration and will enjoy a long European holiday to celebrate. In my admittedly rarer moments of fortitude, though, I find myself gingerly trying to unpack my desire. Is my life really that hard? Am I that weak? And if I do need some kind of break, does it really have to be in Cornwall? 

The answers to those questions, respectively: no, yes, and of course not (although it would be nice). The truth is that I am weaker than I care to admit and that weakness manifests itself in a desire to not be forged by the drudgery of daily life but rather escape to, well, anywhere but here. It is easier to whisk myself away to Cornwall than to look, really look, for the beauty in my pile of laundry. 

I was struck while reading Tish Harrison Warren's beautiful Liturgy of the Ordinary earlier this year by how much of life is just maintenance. Countertops need wiping, dishes need washing, floors need sweeping, bodies need nourishing all on a daily basis. I can go to bed, fed, with a clean house, only to wake up and create another pile of dishes and shed alarming amounts of hair on my kitchen floor, all of which needs to be cleaned up again by the end of the new day. 

It can be so easy for me to dismiss these quotidian tasks as futile, Sisyphean, even. But every swipe of the counter, every pot of vegetarian chilli, every tooth brushed is shaping me somehow. The more I engage in my daily tasks with joy, the more beauty I find in the mundane. I water my plants and discover that a new leaf is emerging. I make another curry and learn that a bit more cumin makes a big difference. I look around at my clean house and find that an ordered space is conducive to good, orderly work in other areas. I become grateful to God that he would use even a broom to cultivate something good in my space and in my life. 

The vast majority of our days are spent in ordinary ways, with God using ordinary means to draw us closer to Him and His people. Brooms, laundry detergent, carrots, gardening gloves - this is the stuff of life. Thanks be to God for such a life.