Marveling

Climbing out of my car this morning, my routine begun, it’s memorized, really, ingrained. Mundane, in fact, most days.
I swung around quickly,
purse across my chest, keys in one hand, thumb on the auto-lock, breakfast in the other hand, Target sacked lunch looped onto the same arm.

I threw open the door behind me, thumb pressing lock as the other hand closes the first door I climbed out of, reached across one car seat to snag my gym bag jammed up underneath the other car seat.
Our program from church a few days ago threatened to blow out into the morning air and a dirty Kleenex from a toddler nose flew to the floor chased by an escaped nectarine crayon joining two too big pink Sunday best shoes and the tissue paper I had stuffed into the toes to keep them on my little girl’s feet.
I quickly sorted through the contents of my gym bag grabbing my tennis shoes from the floorboard with a miraculously free hand, picking a little boy’s stocking hat out of them and throwing it back into his car seat to nuzzle over his ears later, his teething ring, Sofie the Giraffe, had somehow made it into my bag too,
smiling, I tuck it also into his car seat to hand to him later.
The gym bag somehow wrangled into grasp also, a balancing, juggling, comical dance.

I breathed my routine in deeply this morning, the chaos of everyday life.
We all have it, we all live it differently.

But it was so beautiful this particular morning, it glistened, it sparkled,
and I find myself somehow marveling this morning in what so often,
too often,
could be considered mundane.

Today, I can marvel in the messes strewn across the car floor.
They’re a send-off of well wishes,
blessings for the day,
a reminder of the precious life I’ve been given.

Just a few years ago, these were my dreams.
If only I would ever have so much...
Over the years, this statement has ended differently, a sort of fill in the blank.
We all have our fill in the blank dreams and ambitions,
once fulfilled, we assume all will be complete.

And yet, like us all, I would imagine, the answers that have come, I’ve often let them slip from my precious grasp,
these once sparkling hopes deteriorate into disappointments through nothing but my own envies and worries and comparisons, setting my sights on something more.

I’ve heard it said, comparison is the thief of joy.

And if this is true, perhaps, then, it is contentment that is the sustenance.

And, in case you were wondering, I didn’t ever make it to the gym.