Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck,  write them on the tablet of your heart. ~Proverbs 3:3

My life is ordinary. It is filled with ordinary moments pressed together, bumping up against each new day with the same simple tasks. Wake, feed, love, scrub, fold, find, sit, stand, carry, hug, breathe, stretch, sleep.

Ordinary. I am ordinary. The moments that etch themselves daily on my heart, the dirt under my son’s fingernails and the salty kiss of a sweat stained brow after a long day of charging around our yard (vanquishing the bad guy), these are ordinary moments in my ordinary world.

Ordinary. I love the word. I would kiss it if I could, so thankful for every blissful moment of simple happiness.

For days now, everything ordinary has seemed so much clearer. The soft, warm weight of my daughter as I lift her from her crib. The chatter of my children creating rhymes in the backseat of the van. The pattering of rain on my roof. The coolness of the sheets when I climb into bed. Everything ordinary is practically sparkling, like diamonds falling all around me.

I am ordinary. I am blessed. And I, just like every other parent, am one tragic misstep away from the unthinkable.

Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck,  write them on the tablet of your heart.

This is me, trying to write on my broken tablet. Ineloquent and fractured, I am scribbling. I am trying.

Two amazing people lost their amazing baby last weekend.

Two doting, cautious and careful parents, lost their child.

And as people swarmed and prying eyes sought the salacious in the midst of a simple misstep, two parents had their ordinary world shatter around them, raining down in chaos and confusion, siren lights and shock and how-did-this-happen?

How could an ordinary life shatter so completely, so utterly, so painfully, in the quickness of a moment?

But it did.

This happened in my family. My plain but beautiful, silly, potlucks-with-my-mother’s-macaroni-salad-and-crock-pots-of mini-wieners-and-meatballs, Christmas Yankee swaps and Easter egg hunts all over the yard, family.

It could happen to any family, at any ordinary moment. A lazy Saturday afternoon can become the defining moment of your life. The last cuddle can be the last cuddle. The last kiss goodnight, can be the last kiss goodnight.

Ordinary is not to be taken for granted. Ordinary is amazing.

For all of the love and faith that I have etched into my heart, that I have tried to live out in the world –  for all of the blogs I have written, the stories I have compiled, the words, words, words, I have twisted into anything even remotely eloquent in all of my life – this morning, I am completely without.

Lord, thank you for the ordinary. For the laundry piles, for the tables to wipe and the dishes to wash. Thank for the promise of a day with no more tears.

Thank you for the peace that only you can provide. But, I beg you, please send that soon.

This is no ordinary hurt.