Extraordinarily Ordinary

Not everyone aspires for greatness, but everybody longs for significance.

This search for significance, to make sure my life counts for something that goes beyond my own little self, is perhaps one of my greatest concerns. It seems that every time I am about to hit the next decade, I get in a frenzy and become more and more preoccupied with the idea of not wanting to miss whatever that is I was born to do.

Since I come from a family of highly successful and well-accomplished people, I’ve always wrestled with an added – purely self-inflicted – pressure to do something great. “Ordinary” has never seemed good enough for me – at least when it comes to making a difference.

But a recent painful event in my life has drastically changed that mentality.

A few weeks ago I lost my dear Aunt Chaty. Aside from having the most beautiful eyes and a smile that brightened your day, my auntie was – according to this world’s standards – an ordinary person.

She lived a happy, yet simple life. She married a good man. She never owned a home and drove an ordinary vehicle. She didn’t earn a college degree and held an regular job until she became a homemaker.

As common as her life was, Chaty made my Uncle Mingo very happy; she raised two outstanding girls; she was there – really there – for my cousins, my siblings and me, and she managed to make a difference in dozens and dozens of marriages.

Despite living an ordinary life, my auntie accomplished extraordinary things with a few simple, yet rare qualities:

1) She was an amazing listener.
2) She really cared.
3) She prayed, believing that God would answer her prayers.
4) She was single-minded and dedicated herself, along with my uncle,
to help couples make their marriages the best they could be.

During her last days, dozens of couples filled the hospital hallway near Aunt Chaty’s room, “crying like babies,” as my mom put it, “as if it was their own mother who was about to dye.”

You see, precious Aunt Chaty meant the world to so many, and in her own extraordinarily ordinary ways, she changed the world around her.

How much more accomplished can anyone be?
It makes me think that, perhaps, the ordinary things I do could make a lasting difference too. I pray the do.