When Life is Nothing Special

I am the quintessential oldest child.

I’m a perfectionistic, list-making goal-achiever who trips over her own feet because she’s gazing at the stars. If I’m not working toward a purpose, I become aimless and sink into moodiness and depression. Last year, my goal was to finish high school with strong grades and a head crammed full of knowledge, ready to tackle the world and its problems. I climbed that mountain with relish, setting my sights beyond the plodding triviality of school, chores and family life. On the other side, I found a new mountain: a minimum wage job in an industrial warehouse, stenciling camouflage patterns on gun parts. At my Dad’s shop. 

There are jobs you shower before, and some you shower after. Apparently, nine hours of playing with stickers in a warehouse is a job you shower after. Often, I come home mentally, physically and emotionally depleted by the daily monotony of the task at hand, only to be greeted by the squabbles and clamor of seven younger siblings and a sink full of dirty dishes to clean. 

I feel aimless. The moodiness has come in random swings. I struggle to embrace purpose. I’m a young person fresh out of school with dreams bigger than camo stickers and a five-year-old sister leaving peas in her bowl.

I didn’t sign up for ordinary.

While I am deeply convinced that God is sovereign and has providentially placed me where He desires, I am often tempted to coddle the feeling of being wasted by God, instead of used.

I know these struggles are not particular to me. Recently, I attended a Christian conference where I had the opportunity to share this struggle with other believers and encourage the fight for joy in the ordinary. After my sessions, many young people shared their frustrations with daily life. 

There were those with parents who refused to support their endeavors, younger siblings with learning disabilities in need of constant and loving attention. Some struggled with rude coworkers and shallow friendships. Others wandered between work, school and family, the tedium of existence droning onward into a life of empty nothings.

I found that among these many conversations, there was a silent, yearning refrain from each individual: I didn’t sign up for the life God gave me.

As young people, we are famous for being dreamers. We want to take on the world. We want to rise, stretch our wings, and reach the fullness of our potential. But then our future is interrupted and postponed with the present task, of the present moment, of the present day. Life shuts the world from our bubble like a distant vision, and we mourn the loss of what we never had.

How can we fight feeling empty in our daily lives? How can we refuse to feel deprived? How can we embrace where God has us rather than be nagged by the feeling that there must be more to life than this?

The Phantom of the Future

The culture tries to liberate us with the message: “chase your dreams.” But this message is not empowering. It is actually an obstacle – a burden – which distracts us from the sharp focus of our lives.

God created us to glorify Him and rest in His promises. Our happiness was never made to depend on how many majors we end college with, how many dollar signs roll into our banking accounts, how many countries we see with our own eyes, the godliness of our spouse, the maturity of our siblings, the amount of space in our home, or the weight on the face of the scale.

Our fulfillment is not in the phantom of the future. God will not give you the strength you need for tomorrow, today. He gives you the strength as you need it, waves upon waves of ceaseless grace. It is in the present, in the hard-knock now, in the monotonous sameness of the everyday that He promises to carry you.

Who Wants Ordinary?

Chasing our dreams seems liberating because it frees us from who we are now, where we are living, the people we are with, and the gifts God has given us. It breaks the shackles of where God has placed us and where He calls us to go (or remain). It’s easier to chase our dreams than face another day just like this one.

Who wants to be ordinary? We want to be something! We want to wring our lives for every spark of firecrackers and color, add our John Hancock to the world’s graffiti, and leave a legacy. We want to take on something huge and leave it better than we found it.

We want to save the world through our good works, to redeem our own existence. We want to be the lord of our own destiny and the god that lives up to the ideal of our bucket lists and Facebook profiles. We want to taste and see that success is good, and in an effort to be like God, we have taken that fruit and eaten.

In our whirlwind of ideas, in our earth-shattering aspirations, we yell ourselves hoarse above the still, small voice. But God is here, with all the fullness of His power, all the abundance of His mercy, all the extraordinary gifts of the Gospel, in the ordinary life we live. God shows His greatest power to redeem the ordinary – where scratchy straw meets infant skin, where wine flows from water, where thousands are filled with loaves of flour and yeast, where crown of thorns meets brow of King, where risen Lord cooks fish on the shore of the sea; when the dead are raised to a real life, the blind are given real sight, the deaf hear real sounds and the mute sing real praises. His mercies rise new every morning, though the day that follows looks the same.

Rest Deeply

The nation of Israel drifted far from God, trying to quench their thirst where there was no water, and satisfy their hunger where there was no bread (Isaiah 55). Failing to live the radical life our dreams promise can leave us as it left them – weary and without hope.

But Isaiah promised that One would come who would take the troubles of His people and lay them on Himself. Christ would carry their sorrows and afflictions. He would gather their tears. He would take up their heavy, daily loads and rest His easy yoke upon them. He would shower His extraordinary grace upon their ordinary lives, and strengthen them by His power so they would not be wasted.

And He promised that there would be rest in Him. Every day.

“He gives power to the faint,
    and to him who has no might he increases strength.
³⁰ Even youths shall faint and be weary,
    and young men shall fall exhausted;
³¹ but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength;
    they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
    they shall walk and not faint.”

– Isaiah 40.

God enables us to mount up with wings and feel His pleasure. He equips us to run with endurance the race He has set before us. But even more common, and even more difficult, He strengthens us to walk the daily, ordinary life He has given, and invites us to rest in Him.

There is no such thing as living up to a potential where God is absent. There will never be a dream to chase where you can stake your happiness. There will never be a mountain to climb on this earth, that will replace the joy of heaven.

God will not waste your life. And He has not left you to live it alone.

When you are weary and disappointed, when you feel aimless, when the job God has given you today is so much harder than changing the world, come to Jesus. Roll your despair onto the Cross and take His yoke upon you, for His burden is easy and His yoke is light.

Live in the ordinary. God is here.