This Everyday Fairytale...

  I love the concept of the simple life. The idea that life doesn’t have to be lived on a grand, impressive scale to be meaningful and fulfilling is very freeing, yet sometimes it feels like an excuse. Am I just being cowardly and poor-spirited to find a small life loving my family and doing my best day by day enough? Should I be striving for more? Even Mother Teresa, who famously said 'Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love,’ did great things.
  I know that I’m not the only person who feels this way; there are plenty of other blog posts far more eloquent than this expounding on the same theme. We want to experience everything life has to offer during our short decades on this globe, yet we don’t want to miss the little things that ultimately give life meaning. We want to do great things, but more often find ourselves doing small things, and so seek to do them with great love. Ultimately my favorite quote on the subject comes from 1 Thessalonians, wherein Paul is exhorting the church members there to “make it your ambition to lead a quiet life and attend to your own business and work with your hands,” so that they will be self-sufficient and respected members of their community. These are good goals.
 And yet...don’t we all crave adventure on some level? A little magic? A life that feels big and well-lived? There’s a reason travel blogs and adventure novels are so popular, not to mention the enduring love for, yes, fairytales. Magic? Check. Adventure? Always. Exciting places? Far far away! Ordinary people doing extraordinary things? Every time! And let’s not forget the happy endings...usually. (I prefer the happy endings!) Little ones and grown-ups alike love to read and watch these stories, and imagine ourselves a part of them. As a child, this is often encouraged and accompanied by elaborate games of make-believe and dress-up...games that I never truly grew out of.
 So this blog is about continuing to find the magical in the everyday, the fairytale in the ordinary, about choosing joy and seeing wonder and beauty in the mundane. This is my simple, small, wonderful, fulfilling happily ever after.