Something Extraordinary

I know I was made for more than this.

I’m sitting on my bathroom floor and he’s given me the third in a string of sarcastic responses in a “discussion” we’re having. My head is bursting and my words are frozen – I can’t verbalize any of what I’m thinking in a way that he’ll understand.

Pinching the bridge of my nose I hang my head toward the tile. This is too familiar.

Weren’t we made for more than this?

I can almost feel the physical weight of my writing projects, church projects and personal favors I’ve agreed to take residence on my shoulders. I’ll probably have to go the chiropractor after all is said and done. Once I finish one, I have another waiting to take its place. I’m in a perpetual state of worry and stress that what I have to get done will not get done.

I feel like Lucy on that episode when she and Ethel are trying to wrap chocolates.

Maybe I’ll freeze. Maybe I’ll just give up on it all.

I’m sure I wasn’t created to live this way.

My daughters are arguing. One of them is screeching at the one who is using angry words. I hear “MINE” and “STOP” and “OUCH”. It hurts my ears to hear. Have I taught them this?

I know my girls were made for something grander than fighting over Polly Pocket shoes.

In moments of lucidity I understand that this bodily, physical, tiring life isn’t the whole of it.

Chad and I have wrestled too hard for the life of our marriage to be sitting on the ground fighting about “tone of voice.” And my stresses? I’ve walked through too much not to extract pure joy from the gift of ministering through my writing. I spent too many hours in painful-joyful labor eight and four years ago to watch my girls tear each other apart.

I can’t help but wonder if we weren’t all made for something extraordinary.

C.S. Lewis thinks out loud, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy , the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

I have to admit that I don’t often feel like this. The worldly collision of words blinds me, the corporeal smells of arguments confuse me and the human sweat of this journey exhausts me.

And so only in apexes of anger, fear or frustration do I really think maybe there is more. Most of life is spent driving my minivan to and from school and wiping peanut butter from the corners of my daughter’s mouth after lunch.

And I forget.

But every once in awhile I see a glimpse of the next step, where hope takes hold of the heart. Peace. Inspiration. Beauty.

A miracle of conversation that flows easily into the next subject, the perfect word on the page, or real true love shared between little girls.

I know that I know that we were each made for something extraordinary. In our hours and our days and in our lifetimes.

Do you believe it? Do you believe you were made for something more?

by Sarah Markley, The Best Days of My Life