Ordinary.  I am completely ordinary.  I have an ordinary marriage, 3 ordinary kids, and 2 ordinary dogs. I live in an ordinary house and drive an ordinary minivan (so ordinary, in fact, that I have to open the trunk with the key fob in the grocery store parking to figure out which ordinary van is mine).  Our kids go to an ordinary public school, we attend an ordinary church, in an ordinary community in Kansas.  I live in Kansas. What’s more ordinary than that?

“Wait!” I can hear you saying it. You want to tell me all the extraordinary things about being ordinary.   Don’t worry, I’m a slow learner, but I’m getting there. That is what Five for Flying is all about; seeking the extraordinary amidst the mundane ordinary of every day family life.

Our littlest one is fascinated with birds.  She loves to watch them fly and hop along the ground.  My big kids have already sorted birds into the ordinary category.  They see the birds every day.  Birds wake them up in the morning, poop on their bikes, and take over the tree in our front yard twice a year as they migrate.  They don’t even notice them anymore.  But the little one is fascinated by them.  She shakes with excitement when she sees them up close, and stretches her little body as high as she can to see them flying out the car window.  Such ordinary things for us, are simply extraordinary to her.

Perhaps the birds and the toddler have it right.  Birds were created for one very specific thing, to fly.  They are the only creatures on this early that can do it.  Flying, now that’s extraordinary.   Humans worked for centuries to perfect the art of flying, and still we can’t do it nearly as well as our little hollow-boned friends.  Why? Because we weren’t created to fly.  It’s as simple as that.  As those sweet little chirping birds grow and get stronger, they begin to find their wings.  With a great example, a gentle push, and a whole lot of faith in what they were created to do, they jump. And then they fly.  No, not ordinary at all.

Maybe, like those little birds, all I really need to do to be extraordinary, is to embrace the ordinary.   Really search for what I was created to do, who I was created to be.  If the birds can do it, maybe so can I.  I hope you’ll join me on this little journey.  I hope you will share your story. Together we can remember that all it takes to go from ordinary to extraordinary is a little push, a little faith, and a whole lot of knowing that we have actually been extraordinary all along.

Welcome to Five for Flying.