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©Heidi Bratton Photography
Time has gone by quickly, but it has been eight years since I started working as a Catholic writer. In that time, my mission has remained the same – I have always wanted to help women find God in the everyday busyness of their lives.
I walk in those shoes. I know how crazy life can be – how hard it is to pray and focus on God when children (especially young children) need your attention, and your to-do list is overflowing with tasks. I know how easy it is to serve everyone else and forget to nurture yourself.
But, we women need to feed the well first. If we aren’t rooted in God, then we can’t go out and serve our families to the best of our abilities. God matters. Prayer matters (even if it happens while showering, or pushing a stroller, or making supper). God is there with us in the housework and the childcare and the hundreds of tasks that fill our days. We just need to pay attention.
Aileen O’Donoghue offered this take on the subject in her reflection for December 31, 2011 in Living Faith [2]: “My claim is that we fail to see God precisely because God is so omnipresent and thus completely knitted into the ordinary. We expect God to be extraordinary, to stand out in contrast with the everyday. But that’s exactly where God is, in the midst of our world and our lives where we do not recognize the one who is the ground of our very being.”
While we can definitely find God in the extraordinary moments of life, often in a heightened way, we simply need to notice to see Him in the more simple moments. God is there in both the beauty and the messiness of life. He is there in the sunrise, and the crying child, and the toddler holding up his arms to be picked up, and a friend’s smile, and the neighbor who needs a favor, and the store clerk, and the animals who share our lives, and the green sprout poking it’s way through the earth, and the teenager trying so hard to figure out where she belongs in the world, and the older person so eager to share his stories with anyone who will listen, and the list goes on and on.
And so, today, I invite you to pause in the midst of the craziness, take a deep breath (God is there in the air, too!) and truly pay attention to finding God in the everyday. Then, say a quick prayer of thanksgiving that God is right there with you.
Where did you find God today?