Romance of Life

I was talking to my friend Rebecca yesterday. We were revisiting an old topic of ours, learning how to do the mundane little tinkerings of life with cheer. It's true that she and I both do not work outside of the home, and we both enjoy the vocation of cooking, cleaning, decorating, and offering hospitality in the space we've been given to do so. We both contend that it adds a certain warmth and welcome to the life of "home", however humble. But there is a certain regularity to the jobs we perform, a certain amount of schlepping, of following well worn paths to the washing machine, the grocery store, the refrigerator, the coffee pot. I suppose it's no different in some ways from the woman who works full-time outside the home and keeps the foundations of her home intact; but it's less out of necessity that we do these things, and more out of a desire to nourish the souls of the ones we love. I want to create an environment where life sparkles around the edges. But when Thursday turns into Friday so suddenly and I do it all again, it can become something lifeless indeed.
The oddity of this is, that if I had a terminal illness or lost my family somehow or was suddenly booted out of my home, it would be apparent to me that working at all these small putterings is a privelege. I would recognize the romance of the mundane, the beauty of doing life and its tasks over and over again. It is a good indeed - to embrace the act of living even in its trivialities, and thank God for another day of breath.