We find ourselves living in another new normal again. And it’s okay. It’s more than okay. Because we are being washed in a torrential outpouring of grace.
We are learning in the stretching. We tore down some of those self-imposed walls. Or were they man-made? I don’t know. I just know they are crumbling down a bit. The rigid, concrete walls which keep out change. The ones that conform us to some preconception, some loose ideal whose origins we do not know.
We seek to lean into God ‘s will and plan. And to bend without breaking. Yet welcoming the pruning shears. To stretch and grow. And break free of shackles that bind. To let Him mold us, shape us, lead us, change us. The heat from the fire refines us. The molding reshapes us. We hope that we are beautiful when we come through the tumbler’s wheel. More beautiful and stronger than before. But more than any superlative or standard or ideal, we hope to more like Christ.
And I am learning in the deep recesses, the places that like to tuck away and hide the false, the myth, the half-truths. That one size doesn’t fit all. And that even the one size fits most isn’t always the right fit.
Because the God of the universe created with an eye on originality and uniqueness. An unfathomable ocean of possibility and endless beauty in the physical world. Mountains and months of snow blanket the earth, no two flakes alike. Endless variety. Infinite variation.
I word searched “normal” in The Message Translation because it matters to me how scripture sees and views “normal”. It’s not a precise study in theology nor a tool in stating a case. It simply gives me pause. There were nine “hits”. Some how that seems infrequent for the whole of scripture. And I long to know why.
And I am seeing that God’s highest and best, it may lay outside the cookie cutter ways we write paradigms for our lives. We are looking at new paths and ways to live out this life for our children and ourselves.
My lens on this life sees beauty in different ways of doing and making art. Of writing. Oh the myriad of writing styles there are to ingest. The cup is full to overflowing with poetry and prose of every imaginable style. Each sip satisfies with it’s original beauty.
And doing church is going through some transformation. We are hungry and thirsty for community, fellowship and teaching. A shift in our life is shifting possibilities here too. The world, our world, our very lives are changing. And there may be another new normal on the horizon for us. I am learning to break the lens of tunnel vision. And to replace it with a lens of grace. Grace for us, our children, and throwing out stale ways of seeing possibility.
One size fits all is too small for a God this big. And His love is too grand to squeeze us into shoes that don’t fit as we run this race of life.
Our new normal feels more beautiful everyday and we are starting to settle into our new skin. Just in time for the new new normal that waits with open arms around the next turn in the road. We travel with a spirit of expectancy. And we walk by faith covered in grace.
A
elizabeth w. marshall 