What is normal

What is normal anyway, really? Is it just a "setting on my washing machine"? Or a regularly scheduled item on my calendar app? Or is normal a happy balance between sorrow and hyper-joy?

I thought I knew. Then real trials came and I quickly learned that there really isn't a normal button for my life. I've lived a pretty simple, vanilla life. The past five months have awakened to me to the fact that vanilla normal is not where I am anymore. I actually started getting a taste two years ago with my preterm labor and then last year with my husband's medical scare.

 

Espresso shots have never enticed me and yet I am drinking the bitterness of these trials. When can I finish the cup so life can be normal again? Do I really long for the "before"? Because we can't go back. We don't get do-overs. I can't rewind to February 13th, when my oldest daughter became desperately ill and my world came to a crashing halt.

And yet. In His loving kindness, God has never ever left me. He has been my hope and stay since before time began, since before these bitter seasons, since my world became not-so-normal. Because He has known the whole vanilla latte thing would change. And He knew that by drinking some espresso-esque trials, I would be changed, not solely because of the dark liquid, but because He has been after my heart all along. In that lies a sweetness I have not known before.

There are days I want to throw the cup and just make some of that sweet vanilla stuff again. But here I am. Being made new as a creation of a faithful Father who has all of this. He has so much more planned than vanilla. The only norm I can lean on is that He never moves. I don't need more faith in all this, I only need to rest on the Faithful One. And that is a normal I am starting to live by.

 

source