Life-as-we-know-it

My husband is at a conference thrown by a bunch of Presbyterians who think the church is "deathly ill."  Perhaps.  Many people are saying that denominations as we know them are dead.  Duh...

Truth is, today's denomination is nothing like the presbyterian church of the 1950's or the 1900's or--pick a year.  We expect life-as-we-know-it.  And when we don't get life-as-we-know-it, we are distressed.

I'm not sure where this life-as-we-know-it comes from.  OK...fall in love and get married?  Is that life as we know it?  Not in my house.  Married just led to day after day of wait-this-isn't-what-I-expected.  Perhaps it was job, moving, honey-I'm-pregnant, going back to school, who is supposed to empty the dishwasher or take out trash.  Perhaps it was look, I cooked dinner (ok, it wasn't), or bought you roses, or spread your mulch, or absorbed your tears and snot.  Whatever it was, it was never "life as we know it."

What is this need to define and then live only life-as-we-know-it?  It only frustrates us.  Because inevitably, trying to define life-as-we-know-it is most significantly a reflection of self...a definition of the world in all the ways we think would make us happy.

Challenge to self this week...stop defining life-as-we-know-it and grieving when it isn't life-as-we-know-it.  Start looking at life-as-it-is and celebrating the gifts we are being given...even when those gifts don't look like what we expect or think we want.  Life-as-it-is may be exactly what we need.