The Miraculous In The Mundane

Hey Dad, I have a fun little "assignment" for you. Pull out an old video of your kids at a younger age and open your eyes to see the "miraculous in the mundane."

After dinner last one night last week I said to my family, "let's look at some old family videos." My 15-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter surprisingly agreed. We put a video of late summer 1996 when my son Jeremy was about 6 and my daughter Holly was 4. Our oldest son, Adam, was 11 and my oldest daughter, Heidi, was an 18 year old heading off to college.

The video was mostly of a camping trip we took with the Barshaw family that summer- without Heidi because she was heading off to college. I remember feeling throughout that trip a grieving of my daughter leaving home and because of that I was not fully "present" as aware of the wonder, the joy of seeing my younger three experiencing camping and fishing together during that trip. To watch the video was like seeing it all with "new eyes," I could see nine years later "the miraculous in the mundane."

The running family joke on that trip was everything we did was a kind of imitation of "Bob" in the movie, "What About Bob?" When Bob, played by Bill Murray, learned to sail he would say, "I'm sailing, I'm sailing...it's not hard. I just let the sail do the work." My son Adam picked up on that and we caught him on the tape saying, "I fish now, I fish. It's not really hard, I just let the pole do the work."

As we turned off the tape and I told my two teens that they needed to get to bed, I held them both extra long. My son, who nearly looks at me in the eye now, and my daughter, who is growing into a beautiful young lady, suddenly looked different to me. Through video I had seen the "miraculous in the mundane," the glory of the moment that I had missed the first time around. I am now newly determined to truly treasure these fleeting days with my teens in my home and see my children with "new eyes"."

If you do this little assignment and put that video in you soon find yourself will truly seeing the "miraculous in the mundane." It's not hard. Just let the video do the work!