Cycles (no, not menstrual)

This morning Bart was ironing and I was still lying in our bed, watching him, saying annoying things, and commenting on the TV show he was watching -- which is part of our Sunday morning routine. This morning he was watching the Hour of Power with Dr. Schuller who started the church which became the Crystal Cathedral in 1955.

I wondered outloud to Bart if Dr. Shuller looked back on his life with satisfaction or if he maybe had gotten just a little bored with it. Sure, he created something amazing, but since 1955 -- that's 50 plus years ago folks -- he has been doing basically the same thing. One of his jobs is to offer a small trinket in exchange for a donation. And he's been doing that for longer than I've been alive almost every. single. Sunday.

When I sit down to blog on Sunday mornings I sometimes feel the same way. Each week, same routine. But when I visited Luverne this past week, and when I drove through Belgrade the week before that, I was thankful for the variety of moving from church to church. I smiled at many memories of incredible people who blessed our lives in those places and smiled again thinking of our good friends here in our hometown now. And even though Bart, especially, has a very similar responsibility each week, there are things that change as well. And I suppose that is true of life at the Crystal Cathedral with Dr. Schuller.

I have often thought about this in this context:

Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.

There is a lot of the mundane in life -- the day in and day out stuff that can't be avoided -- the endless piles of laundry, the loading and the unloading of the dishwasher, the start of school, the end of it, the holidays, the birthdays, all things that cycle -- but in the midst of all that there are moments that can't be described. Something small that makes us laugh or some big moment -- a wedding, the birth of a child, the completion of a huge project -- or some small moment -- the spectacular view of a sunset, a phone call from an old friend, a long awaited apoloty -- that fills us immediately with indescribable joy.

And so we unsuspectingly move through life, doing what we're supposed to do, and once and a while we have one of those moments. And that, my friends, makes it all worthwhile.