Normal Can Be Nice

Normal can be boring, drudgery, the same old. But sometimes normal is very nice. I use those over-used words (very and nice) deliberately because they go with "normal."

The Christmas season turns things kind of topsy-turvy for a while. So even though January looks boring, January is also nice. This past January I heard people saying a number of times, "Isn't it nice to get back to normal?" Routine. A schedule.

When the whole family is home it means having to cook or organize meals three times a day. During normal workweeks I usually only have to cook once a day. One man who had houseguests over the holidays-very welcome houseguests-talked about how much food they went through with guests on hand.

The trouble with normal is that you don't know how nice it is until life gets turned upside down. A local plumbing business airs radio commercials touting the benefits of "normal" when it comes to your household plumbing. We can all identify there. Emergency mode sets in when the pump gives out, the pipes freeze, or the well goes dry. Speaking of plumbing, it is also a very good example of everything we take for granted when things are working okay. How many times a day do we turn on the tap and never stop to be grateful for the luxury of hot or cold running water in our homes? How many millions of people in the world do not even have this basic "need" met?

Right before Christmas, our pump suddenly wouldn't work. It was the day before we were expecting guests for a small party. We had also been hunting all week for a Christmas tree to no avail, but that's another story. If you are having a Christmas party, two things that are nice to have are running water in the house and a Christmas tree. We pulled some water out of our old cistern, I took a shower at the office, and otherwise coped until my husband figured out that evening what was wrong. The next morning, we even found a free Christmas tree that was suitable. The kids hurried to decorate it while I went to work for a few hours. And we had our little party, with water and tree.

These are mere inconveniences in the grand scale of things and only illustrate that normal is very nice.
I've seen folks going around with T-shirts or bumper stickers saying, "Why be normal?" I can definitely agree with that sentiment: at times I feel the need for adventure, to step out of the box, my comfort zone, and do something totally abnormal or unexpected for me.

But that is not what we're talking about here. We're talking about normal as the opposite of out-of-routine, things-going-wrong, life-upside-down. I love December, but thank goodness for January and February. Thank goodness for nice old normal. And don't forget to thank God for normalcy (now that's a funny, ironically abnormal looking word)-the things in your life you depend on without much thought or appreciation expressed: water, sunshine, skin covering your body, bones that work, thumbs, sleep.

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Contributed by Melodie Davis: MelodieD@MennoMedia.org Melodie is the author of eight books and writes a syndicated newspaper column, Another Way