I’m grateful for more reasons than I can count to be living in a rural area.  But one of the most wonderful benefits is the fact that just half a mile from my house is the intersection for one of the few old-fashioned country roads remaining.  Unlike interstate highways or other major thoroughfares, this road doesn’t blaze from one destination to another, bludgeoning its way through the landscape—it meanders, weaving gently through hills and curves, basking in patches of sunlight and splashing through rustic streams.  

There’s hardly a day of my life that I’m not on this road—running, or heading to town, or just walking through the evening quiet.  I love this old road as a faithful friend, and I know every bump and curve as well as I know the layout of my home.  Despite my familiarity with it, though, I noticed lately that I’ve overlooked something surprising.  

The scenery along this road makes an excursion down it a relaxing journey for the soul and a field trip for the eyes.  Beginning near a beautiful lake, the road winds up a mountainous ridge, bristling with trees, then swoops down into a pleasant, spacious valley, full of sprawling farmhouses and pastures dotted with sleek cows, framed by the ripples of rolling hills.  So, when I travel this road, I’m generally looking at the profile of the hills, or the cloud shadows on the pastures, or the noble horses trotting through a field.  I focus on the treetops, hoping to spot birds; scan the forests, noticing deer; or even smile at the church camp located at the end of the road, where I can often see kids enjoying themselves in the great outdoors. There’s only one place on this road that doesn’t grab my attention—the ditch. 

It’s not surprising. Few people are drawn to the ditch. Google defines it quite simply as “a narrow channel dug in the ground, typically used for drainage alongside a road or the edge of a field.”  That’s it. It’s not put there for conservation purposes, or aesthetic appeal, or recreational use.  It won’t be featured on the front of advertising brochures or filmed for a television special.  It’s nothing more than a trench to direct muddy runoff to a place where it won’t impede traffic.  That’s uninspiring at best and repulsive at worst.  For one thing, all that dirt-filled water can coalesce into some serious mud. (My Jack Russell Terrier, Gailey, recently stepped casually into the ditch during an evening walk and immediately found himself securely lodged in goo up to his belly.  Extricating him was a very interestingexperience.)  In summer, the ditch becomes weedy and overgrown, clogged with rambunctious vegetation.  In winter, the water forms sad puddles of discolored ice.  And at all seasons, the ditch is unfortunately randomly scattered with rubbish—decomposing tree branches and toadstools as well as the empty Styrofoam cups, shattered beer bottles, paper bags, and candy wrappers discarded by a thoughtless crowd.  

So it’s no wonder that I overlook the ditch.  It’s not a shock that I don’t feast my eyes on it or make a special effort to notice it. The beauty of the road is found elsewhere—in the forests, the ridges, the lovely farms, the shy deer, the scenic valleys.  

Right?

That’s what I believed. Until recently—when I saw something that changed my mind forever.

I don’t know when it started, and I’m not sure why it took me so long to notice.  But one day, while I was running, I saw a beautiful patch of black-eyed Susans.  Their shiny yellow petals waved proudly from their bushy dark centers.  I paused to admire them.  And guess what?  They were growing in the ditch.

Later, I noticed something else.  Some plant akin to a morning glory had spread soft tendrils through one section of the ditch. Each day, I was treated to more of its flowers—full white blooms, cupped to catch the sun, with breathtaking violet hearts.  And this beauty was growing in the ditch.

Next came some triangular flowers, pointed like a paper hat and electric-blue.  Then the misty white ones, like so many tiny stars.  Then some like little yellow buttons, stiff and proud on their stalks.  Even several patches of thistles joined the fun; their snaggle-toothed leaves and spiky purple flowers brought a smile to my face.  

How had this happened? Before I could blink, before I could realize what was occurring, the flowers had taken over the ditch—reclaiming something barren, normal, even ugly and turning it into pure loveliness.  

Almost without thinking, I began noticing the ditch.  I began watching for the flowers, examining them, marveling over each new variety that appeared.  I began counting the kinds I saw, rejoicing in new blooms, even taking photos of them. The ditch that had never received a moment of my attention (except when I was freeing an irate Jack Russell) had now become a spectacular part of the landscape.  The ordinary had been transformed into something very extraordinary.

My friends, I made a dramatic misjudgment—one that is very common but very deadly all the same.  The assumption is that beauty is absent in the everyday.  Beauty, so says the world, is found in the dazzling moments, the jaw-dropping Wow!times.  And with this mindset, we categorize our world.  Over hereis the beauty—the moments of heartfelt worship, the days of personal triumph, weddings and graduations and anniversaries and holidays and big-picture occasions.  Over thereis everything else—the “normal” world, of balancing checkbooks and brushing our teeth, eating lunch and cleaning up Cheerios and vacuuming the car.  Sometimes we create a whole separate mythological existence—the life we dream of, the life that, in our heart of hearts, we perhaps feel that we deserve.  It’s the “someday” we’re imagining when we talk of our dreams and hopes, the ethereal “tomorrow” behind every boring today. It’s these—the hoped-for futures, the Kodak moments—that get our attention.  But maybe—just maybe—what lies between these isn’t as meaningless as we think.  

You see, we become accustomed to our everyday.  Like the ditch, it’s ever-present, a well-worn groove always running alongside our journey.  And sometimes we miss the beauty in it precisely because we’re not expecting it. We look so high up the mountains of anticipation or so far down the road of future goals that we miss what’s right under our very noses—the beautiful gift of today.  

Our everyday, though, is where we live.  Don’t misunderstand me:  the big moments are fun, and plans for the future are valuable, but nothing can replace the day-to-day pattern of our lives.  It’s the fabric of our existence.  And by far the vast majority of our time on this planet is spent in mundanity.  That sounds distasteful, but it’s true.  However, just because every day isn’t a far-flung adventure doesn’t mean that you can’t plant some flowers in your ditch.  

Your “ditch”—your everyday existence—will either be a mindless rut or a meaningful path.  And the wonderful news is you get to choose.  If we rush through our days half-awake, gaze fixed on a to-do list and mind harassed by worries, then our “ditch” is guaranteed to be unappealing.  But there’s another way—a secret, found in a simple attitude shift.  “Whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God” (1 Corinthians 10:31 ESV).  Does that mean mowing the yard, cleaning the countertops, and grocery shopping are all acts of worship?  Absolutely. And they’re the things that ground us, that give us a chance to connect with the rhythm of life—to look around and smile and think, “Yes, this is where I live.  This is who I am.  Maybe someday it will be different, but for now, this is my today.  I embrace it.”

Perhaps the “trendy” nature of modern Christianity is partly to blame for the lack of interest in the normal.  We’re trained to continually look for the next Big Thing—the next church conference, the next Christian concert, the next spiritual high.  But in the flurry of novelty, we’ve lost sight of the truth that ancient believers, living in a far more patient time, knew and understood: we either choose to walk hand-in-hand with God down a long path of normal, uneventful days, seeking Him humbly for daily grace, or we don’t walk with Him at all.  God didn’t ask us to run ourselves ragged chasing sporadic tastes of His Presence.  He’s the God of the big days, the sad days, the happy days, the red-letter days, yes. But most importantly, He’s the God of the ordinary days.  He’s the God of the ditch.  

If you don’t believe me, just look at the Gospels.  We might miss this fact, but most of Jesus’s miracles were performed on very ordinary days, during very ordinary occasions, among very ordinary people.  He went to a routine synagogue service, and He healed a man with a palsied hand.  He noticed a blind man beside the road, and He restored his sight.  He was quietly praying on a hillside, and then He calmed the sea.  The miracles of Jesus were starbursts in the middle of an otherwise uneventful day. And let’s not forget that the public ministry of Jesus—His baptism, teaching, healing, ministering, discipling, His crucifixion, His burial, His resurrection and ascension—was crammed into the space of three short years.  That’s less than ten percent of His entire time on this globe.  Imagine how many ordinary days He experienced—days of working with Joseph in the carpentry shop, helping Mary around the house, playing with His brothers and attending school and celebrating the family milestones.  Does God notice the ordinary days?  Absolutely. He lived through thirty years of them before He ever began His public ministry—thirty years that prepared Him, even though He was God, for the great work He did in three.

If Jesus was intentional about His everyday, it’s doubly important for us.  Treat each day like an act of worship—a loan from God that you return to Him, loaded with the interest of love and service.  In her book One Thousand Gifts, author and philosopher Ann Voskamp speaks of how her life changed when she remembered that “God is in the details; God is in the moment.  God is in all that blurs by in a life” (54).  At the same time, she acknowledges how “frustratingly common” the search for God is on the days “with laundry and kids and dishes in sink,” the days full of “insulting ordinariness” (55).  But in the end, she concludes that encounters with God are near, and that “surging magnificence…cascades over our every day here” (31).

“Surging magnificence.”  Yes, we’re not stuck in our everyday. We’re placed there—placed there by a God Who knows exactly what we need, Who spills beauty over our lives with the gratuitous exuberance of confetti at a party.  So today, take a closer look at your ditch.  There could be flowers growing there—the love of a family member, a smile from a friend, a walk with a pet, a job you enjoy, a glimpse of sunset fire in the west, the swinging sling of the crescent moon.  At first the flowers might be harder to find, but then you’ll notice one.  And another. And then another.  And soon you’ll see the beauty of your ditch.  It may be messy at times.  It may be boring at times.  It may be wild at times.  That’s ok. It’s your life—and from the very mundanity that feels so dead, from the dry-dust ordinariness of the everyday, spring the beautiful flowers God has planted. 

Did this post give you a new perspective? What are some flowers in your ditch? Let me know in the comments!

Also, for more information about Ann Voskamp and her amazing ministry, please visit her website. One Thousand Gifts, from which these quotations were drawn, is an intensely moving and life-changing book that has greatly impacted my writing.

Last but not least, did you know that my short story “After the Storm” was one of the winners of an international writing contest? Check it out here!