I always knew I wasn’t like everyone else; I always wanted to be, or at least enough to fit in. It never worked. So then for a long time I decided to be the least like everyone else I could be; that, my friends, is a long, hard road to hoe. I recommend against it.

Finally, in my late 20’s, I realized that no one is like everyone else. None of us really fits in, but happiness is usually found when we realize that who we are is who we should be, and we spend our time among those who have realized the same. I finally saw how I fit, how the crazy shape of my jigsaw piece fit perfectly in with the crazy jigsaw pieces of my friends and family. It was good.

I haven’t spent a lot of time trying to fit in since. I know that when I am among friends I don’t have to try – it just works. There is something beautifully ordinary in accepting the fact that we are all extraordinary in our own way. Life looks simpler and peace comes quickly and quietly.

These days though, I wish for the ordinary. I am tired of people finding me extraordinary and admirable. I’d far rather be just another face in the crowd, sifting through the usual mess a baby makes of the orderly existence you had before they were born. How I long for the mundane, the common, the entirely dull. I want to be just like everyone else more than a fifth grade girl in a training bra. That’s a heckuva lot of wanting to be like everyone else.

But instead of the commonplace I am spending my days trying to live up to the legacy of my son and the call of my creator. Inadequate doesn’t begin to describe the feeling here, but it is where I belong – and no matter what I desire, ordinary will never suffice. If you find me something more than adequate, it is only because an extraordinary baby and a divine God decided I was able and ready to do what I would tell you I could not. The life you see me live and the words you hear me utter are only by the grace of God and for the love of a baby boy. I know so many of you who have the same love and grace in your lives. Perhaps this is an ordinary existence after all.