Extraordinary Living...It's Kind Of Like Guthrie's Sauce

I don't know about your Sunday, but it's taken me a full day to recover from mine...not because it was bad...but because I've had to wrestle with my thoughts and ideas on the whole topic of "ordinary" living...and it's worn me out. As Russ spoke at the Gathering yesterday, I wrote down something that he said, and I've been thinking about it ever since.

As we finished our "One" message series, Russ said, "God invites us to move from ordinary to extraordinary." It's such a simple comment to make, but so difficult to really understand and live by. I mean, what is "ordinary"? My life is different than everybody else's in the world because I'm the only one that gets to live it. And yet, so much of my life is perfectly in line with the majority of the population around me. So, am I simply living an "ordinary" life? I've got a wife, three kids, a couple minivans, a house in the suburbs, a job (aka pastoring a new church), a great church (aka my job), a few really close friends, a large number of good friends and acquaintances, and a little league soccer team that I coach. Yep, that's a pretty ordinary life...I love it...but sometimes things seem a little too routine. Unfortunately, turning these things in and swapping them out for something "extraordinary" has been a little confusing to me. Which of these things is most holding me back from an "extraordinary" life?

I've watched people I know wrestle with this question, and make some really stupid decisions along the way. I've known many people that thought their life was ordinary (aka boring and mundane) because of their wife and kids...so they left...they traded in the ordinary for what they thought would be an extraordinary relationship with "the other woman"...all of those men have ended up disappointed. I've known some that decided their life was ordinary because of the minivan and the house in the suburbs...so they packed up their families and moved...they decided to change their scenery...some were disappointed and some loved it. I've known people that have quit their jobs, left their churches, cut ties with their friends, become distant from everyone around them, and changed sports...all as attempts to trade the "ordinary" life in for the "extraordinary".

As I've thought about all of this in my own life and lined it up with Russ' quote from Sunday, I think I finally figured it out. The key is in the word "extraordinary." If the word was "altra-ordinary" then the concept of completely trading one thing for another would make sense. But the word is "extra-ordinary" which implies something totally different.

When I was in college at UGA (Go Dawgs!!!) we used to go to Guthrie's all the time. If you've never been to Guthrie's you owe it to yourself to go at least once in life (www.guthrieschicken.com). It's an old-school version of Zaxby's with a simpler menu (6 items), greasier food, and a more incredible sauce made with a mixture of red pepper, black pepper, tabasco sauce, mayonnaise, and probably a few other ingredients. My order was usually the same: Chicken finger plate-no slaw-extra fries, and four extra sauces. The "ordinary" chicken finger plate came with 5 fingers, a handful of fries, a little slaw, a piece of toast, and one cup of sauce. I hate slaw, the fries were great, and the sauce...oh the sauce...it was amazing. So I eliminated one small part of the ordinary to make room for the "extra" fries and the "extra" sauce...in other words, I eliminated one small part of ordinary and then just got "extra" "ordinary" stuff to make the meal perfect.

Spiritually speaking, now when I look at my ordinary life, I will no longer see the "ordinary" parts as boring and mundane. Instead, I will see the "ordinary" parts as not fully enjoyed yet. In other words, when the daily grind of some basic parts of life gets in the way of "extraordinary" living, I will ask God to help me enjoy the important things even more and make a deeper impact in every area of my life. I will attempt to eliminate a few small parts of ordinary (pointless errands, wasted time watching Conan, etc.) and then just get "extra" evenings with my wife and kids, "extra" time with my close friends, "extra" opportunity to make a difference in the lives of good friends and acquaintances and strangers around the world, and "extra" enjoyment of building into the lives of the nine kids on the soccer team. That is the "extra"ordinary life I am dreaming about now, and I wonder if that's kind of what God dreams about for me, too.