There are times when I identify way more with Walter Mitty than I care to admit. Specifically, I am talking about the 2013 film version starring Ben Stiller for the way the movie removes the hen-pecked spouse angle and imbues James Thurber’s original short story with extraordinary adventures. Sometimes, as I move through my day, I wonder if I seem like Ben Stiller’s on-screen Mitty character so that I am not merely the mama standing at the stove flipping bacon to its exact crispness, but in my head I am visiting one of many exotic places, like Venice or Cairo or Paris and discovering long-held secrets no one has before discovered.
Or it may even be something a bit less exotic but equally less mundane than daily chores—like running a small movie theater that runs classic films or owning a small popular piano bar where folks gather with family and friends. Because, let’s face it, sometimes real life leaves a bit to be desired and the imagination more than willingly fills in those mundane gaps with dazzling delights.
More often than not, my teenagers provide similar delight to my day, thereby making what otherwise might feel ordinary seem a bit more, well, extraordinary. Or, at the very least, those more seemingly ordinary things take on a bit more of a sacred sensibility when we look at them through the lens of relationship, for me, that includes my relationship with each of them, but also my relationship with and to God.
I am almost always on the hunt for the mystical in my everyday life. Sometimes that can come in the form of an unexpected rainbow in a gray sky or it can be carried along in the wind winding through the branches of a newly budding tree. Other times, I see it plainly in the faces of my teenagers, their faces captivated by a song they may be listening to in their headphones or in a simple exchange of conversation about life in general or more specifically (like a story one of them is working on or a challenge one of them is dealing with or an insight they willingly share about themselves and their journey through this life).
Those connections we make with our people, especially our teenagers are important, and, honestly, I crave them. Maybe it’s because there is ingrained within me the truths of the scriptures, especially those guiding principles from the New Testament that when we serve others, we are actually serving God and when we do our work, we should do it as unto God and not for man. Perhaps that’s why when I look into my girls’ faces it feels as though I am looking into the face of God. This is actually an idea I have taken to heart from the first time I saw a performance of Les Miserables when I was about 14 years old: to love another person is to see the face of God.
Often, this idea stretches to include when I hear the voice of one I love or watch someone I love engaged in a favorite or creative activity. When I come upon my youngest who is absorbed in the music playing through her headphones, lying on her floor, eyes closed, I see her transported into the place of all the other Walter Mitty adventurers like me. Or when I am washing dishes and my 16 year old wanders into the kitchen and wants to know which of her most recent dragon iPad drawings I like the best and proceeds first to take screenshots of all of them and then scroll through them one by one so I can see each one in detail. Sometimes, as she talks, describing who each dragon represents and I admire the intricate details of the drawing, we have both been transported from this world to another altogether, perhaps even on the back of a dragon.
Life is filled with so many tasks needing our time, our energy, our attention and sometimes our mindset can be the determining factor for how we perceive the moments of our lives. Do we see them as boring and ordinary and mundane? Or are there perhaps glimpses of the extraordinary and the sacred set right before us that we may miss if we don’t open our minds and our hearts to them? Clearly, cooking bacon or washing dishes or folding laundry do not compare to being a heroine on a quest. Not at first glance. But maybe, just maybe, the quest is to see the beauty in the simplicity and the divine in the ordinary moments of our lives. Maybe, just maybe, that is the real adventure I’m on with these two amazing young women—to discover the wonder and delight hidden in the plain sight of our lives.