ELEVATE YOUR DAY

Sometimes, it seems to me, I live the same day over and over. I am a person of routine and habitual behavior. My ritualistic behaviors make for good, orderly, direction to my day. Periodically one should question the validity of a particular habit/ routine or risk becoming stuck in a rut. Evaluation is possibly the initial step for elevating a mundane day to a magnificent one. I understand that there is absolutely nothing bad about the mundane other than I am created to be magnificent. I am a diamond in the making.

The constant routine of high pressure and high heat on graphite /coal (think of the stuff in a #2 pencil) is what produces diamonds. That takes billions of years…I don’t have even a thousand years and so there should be a bit of urgency about living a magnificent life. And yes, the hardest substance known to man can now be produced by man in a matter of days, but the technique is much the same - high pressure, high heat in extreme conditions.

I have hand-washed dishes more frequently lately. Pausing to feel the soft sudsy water on my hands, listening to squeaky clean dishes being dried adds depth to the act. There is something satisfying about placing the dish immediately in the cabinet versus waiting to unload the dishwasher. It is a small thing, but the mundane-ness of washing dishes is elevated when I pay attention to what I am doing. In other words, paying attention to action while I am doing what I do and leaning into the routine is one way of elevating it.

My youngest next door neighbor walks in my door smiling and asking for something… anything. That’s her routine and she seems stuck on autoplay. We don’t know when it started. Most of the time to her request I respond, “can you wait a minute?” “Can’t I get a hug?” is my husband’s response. When we cause her to pause and step out of her ritual of asking for something, her experience changes. A hug dangling upside down from my husband’s arms makes her giggle uncontrollably and she forgets her habitual asking.

I wish the mundane nature of adulting could be as easily elevated as washing dishes or hanging upside down for a child. It can’t, or can it?

I don’t get to break my morning routines because they order the rest of the day. But there are mornings when a spirited song becomes the soundtrack for them, and the day is made more joyful and vibrant because of it. Sometimes we can encourage ourselves to elevate the day. Other times, we need a little push. Do what you need to do to make it so.

Psalm 118:24

PONDER THIS THOUGHT…There is a difference between a rut and a routine.