Lauren Denton
This summer, I’ve been reading a book I think will become my required summertime reading. “Liturgy of the Ordinary” (by Tish Harrison Warren) is about finding God’s presence “in the cracks of our days.” It’s my second time through it, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the last time I read it was also during the summer when my kids are home with me and our regular routines fly out the window.
The author talks about how much of our life is driven by habits and routines. Though we’re often not even aware of these habits, we’re shaped by them. Many are good — reading stories every night with our kids before bed, for example, or pausing to thank God for our food before we eat it. But others, like picking up our phone the minute we open our eyes in the morning or allowing ourselves to become unglued at the slightest interruption in our plans (hello, Lauren), can whittle away at us, making us less alive, less “quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.”
Taking a hard look at the habits and mindsets I’ve allowed to become ingrained in me has revealed that many are forming me into a person I don’t particularly want to be — namely, a short-tempered, easily frustrated, muttering-under-my-breath grouch. But the author reminds us that we can cultivate new habits and practices to replace those that are “malforming us.” And boy, does my life need a lot of this type of cultivation.
I need to cultivate the habit of flexibility. By nature, I am a planner and an organizer. I like my spaces to be neat and uncluttered and for things to go pretty much how I’ve planned them out. Sounds just like life with children, right? My craving for perfectly neat spaces and ordered days is fine for one person (me), but add in any extras and things fall apart. But the problem isn’t the other people and all the chaos and mess and sin they bring with them — the problem is me. My own chaos, my mess, my sin. The problem is in how I react to small, insignificant things that throw my plan off course.
Cultivating flexibility means accepting life as it comes, including the inevitable twists and U-turns. It means opening my heart to the people around me and all the life they bring with them.
I need to cultivate the habit of repetition. Well, let’s be honest — as a parent of small people, much of my life is repetition. No need to cultivate that habit. What I need is to cultivate the understanding that these repetitive practices are part of the “ordinary wonders of life in Christ.” I often think once I finish making this PB&J or folding this basket of laundry or sweeping up these crumbs, my work will be done.
But in parenting, just like in the life of faith, the work is never done, but the work isn’t the problem — the work is what’s shaping us to be a people who see wonders in the midst of our regular, “boring” days.
I need to cultivate the habit of looking up and around. One of the damaging habits Warren talks about has to do with technology and how we’ve allowed ourselves, almost trained ourselves, to look to technology to provide our entertainment and stimulation. Social media, and the internet in general, have completely changed how we as a people relate to each other and the world around us.
In the fourth season of the podcast “Ear Hustle,” cohost Nigel Poor asks cohost Earlonne Woods (who’d recently had his decades-long prison sentence commuted) how life had changed in the outside world while he’d been in prison. Woods said one of the first things he noticed when he got out was how everyone was walking around with their heads down all the time. It took him a minute to figure out that everyone was looking down at their phones. When he entered prison, the internet wasn’t a thing — or at least it wasn’t in your pocket. Now, he marvels at how no one looks at the world around them anymore.
I so often wish I could go back to life before the internet (and take my kids with me), but I can’t. Instead, I have to find a way to use it in a healthy way. You know how when you’re straining to hear something, closing your eyes can make it easier to hear? In the same way, getting the internet out from in front of our face makes other senses sharper.
Without a mini-computer in our hand, we see our kids tumbling together on the floor in laughter as a wonder instead of a distracting noise. If we’re not on our phone in the grocery store checkout line or while our kids are playing at the park, we have a conversation with an older gentleman who maybe hasn’t talked to anyone all day. Looking up and around — not down at constantly changing headlines or other people’s spiffy, filtered lives — shows us so much beauty we’d otherwise completely miss.
The act of cultivation is hard work, whether we’re cultivating the land or a life. It requires near-constant vigilance, awareness and presence. But I’m seeing that the payoff can be significant: A spacious place that’s nourishing and life-giving, with fewer pests threatening us with damage.
A measure of patience and kindness instead of quick anger and frustration. A crack in our day that fills up with light instead of discontented darkness.
When I’m not writing about my family and our various shenanigans, I write novels (and go to the grocery store). THE HIDEAWAY,
HURRICANE SEASON, and GLORY ROAD are available in stores and online. You can reach me by email at Lauren@LaurenKDenton.com, visit my website LaurenKDenton.com, or find me on Instagram @LaurenKDentonBooks, Twitter @LaurenKDenton, or on Facebook ~LaurenKDentonAuthor.
