What's ordinary about extraordinary

there is prognosis and data.

there is following all the recommendations.

there is following none of the recommendations.

there is prayer and attitude and hope.

then there is luck.

the unpredictable nature of one person's cells to one specific compound at one moment in time.

for better or worse.

some surprises are celebrated, others mourned.

oh wait...sort of like the rest of life.

i knew i'd seen it somewhere before.

~ "surprise", by kindred spirit, oncRN

I've heard it a thousand times if I've heard it once: "I don't know how you do it."

(Fill in the blank: raise four kids born in a 4 year span of time; go to graduate school; survive cancer; keep smiling; don't become murderous when you clean up the 10th poop mess of the day; live with a husband on call...etc., etc....)

The reality is, God selects the trials that fit us.  He shapes our lives to change us.  My life ceased to be ordinary the day I surrendered my soul to Christ, NOT on the day I was diagnosed with cancer.  And still, my life doesn't feel the least bit out of the ordinary.  I have come to expect nothing less than the cancer/kids/school/work/financial woes life that God has called me to lead.  How about you?  What is "out of the box" about your life?  How is God stretching you?  All of us are works in progress...and the master Craftsman selects just the right medium and just the right chisel to shape us best to draw others to eternal life.  The chisels He's using on me are cancer, school, a busy schedule, a heart condition, a crisis in relationships.  The chisels chipping away at your granite doubtless look different.  But, if you're a believer, they're accomplishing the same end.  In the end, you are supposed to look - not like yourself - but like Christ...as close as possible to that unattainable Perfection we call Abba, Father.

Christ presses the shape of his own face into the clay of our soul when we cease to be hard and resistant, and when we take our own amateur hands off and admit that we are not such good artists as he is. Here we can see clearly what faith is. Faith is the assurance that what God will make of you, as Christ is formed in your life, is vastly to be preferred over what you can make of yourself. Faith is the confidence that the demonstration of Christ's work in your life is more wonderful than all the praise you could get for yourself by being a self-made man—or woman. Faith is a happy resting in the all-sufficiency of what Christ did on the cross, what he is doing now in our heart, and what he promises to do for us for ever. ~John Piper, May 15, 1983