This is your real life.

Right here, right now, this is your real life.

Whether you feel happy or sad, purposeful or unfulfilled, content or covetous; this moment is your real life. The children might be swinging from the rafters, or you might be settling down after the bedtime rituals. This is your real life. The dirty dishes. Mount Laundry. The crisp night air. The musty scent of changing seasons. All happening now. All your real life.

Several weeks ago, I stumbled across a quote by C. S. Lewis, at the moment I most needed it. You might have noticed it up on the blog header, or not. But it made such an impact on me that I’ve been mulling it over for weeks. I’m sure it’s relevant to most of us, but it stopped me in my tracks that first day I read it.

Here’s the thing: I imagine I can control things.

It is one of my great weaknesses. I like to know what is happening, and when. Each day, I plan out everything I would like to accomplish, and make note of all the things that must be done. I like to have routines that run like clockwork. But they don’t always. Because I am human, and everybody around me is human. It wouldn’t be an issue, either, if it were not for my heart’s murmurings and discontent when things don’t go my way. I found myself in a cycle of disappointment when things went awry in our day. In my mind, I had an idea of what our perfect days would look like. When our days failed to meet my standards, I felt that somehow our “real life” was being bogged down by these monotonous interruptions.

“The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one’s ‘own,’ or ‘real’ life. The truth is of course that what one calls the interruptions are precisely one’s real life — the life God is sending one day by day.”

Could I really think that God Almighty, who ordered my footsteps and called me by name, was thwarted in his purpose for my life by what I considered interruptions in my messy days? Of course not! I felt (feel) quite foolish, to think how bothered I can be by the little “interruptions” to “my time”. It is not my time at all. It is God’s time.

This is the Day, which the Lord hath made.

Today is the day he has given me. This day, in this house, with these children and my man. I will do what needs to be done. When it happens that the next thing just wasn’t on my list for the day, I will remember that this is the moment that was meant to be–not that figment of my imagination and Pinterest. For this is the day. This is my real life.