old emails and happy thoughts

If my email inbox is indicative of my life, then I am a giant mess. I just spent an hour deleting almost 1500 emails. Most of them were old newsletters, coupons, or book/play/planning-group stuff.  I really need a better organization system I guess.


But there were a few worth saving:

Words of encouragement from a sister.

A note of love from a friend (or 2).

A poem I had written in 2003 that my mom found.

An invitation Ana had made a few years ago to invite friends to a church activity.

Photos of my kids people had emailed me.

Through all the mess there was interspersed happy thoughts and memories. (And a few tears too.)

Such is life I guess. We trudge through the mundane and check off to-do lists and sometimes get bogged down by the ordinariness of life. But the extraordinary is in there. It may be hidden or tucked away. And maybe sometimes we throw it out with the rest without realizing. But it is there. If we take time to remember those moments of extraordinary beauty, we can see it. The more we give of ourselves, the more we see it reflected back to us. In our children, our friends, our families, even in ourselves.

So maybe Sacrament Meeting today included kids sprawling on the chairs or crawling up the aisles. And maybe dinner tonight consisted of ramen noodles and scrambled eggs. And maybe a certain kid refused to go to bed because the sheets were too cold and there was NO WAY they would warm up and I had to bribe said kid with a quarter to get into bed with the promise to report back to me in the morning on the sheet temperature. And maybe Charlie won't sleep well tonight and a million other little things. I will keep wading through it all. The joy, the extraordinary, the thing worth saving and remembering, is in here somewhere.