Give me an ordinary love.
Give me morning hair and old, comfy pajama pants.
Give me dirty socks next to the bed every night. Even if the bed is in different continents at different times and seasons of life. Even if the bed sags in the middle. Even if the bed is full of long, growing limbs and tiny, precious bad dreams that need to be comforted with blind kisses.
Give me an ordinary love.
Even on its most boring days.
Give me an ordinary love.
Give me a dishwasher unloaded without fail every morning, noon, or night.
Give me basketball practices he never misses and boys he always listens to.
Give me Lego patience and Polly Pocket fascination.
Give me an ordinary love.
Give me sticky kisses over South African pancakes and dreams we worry over side by side. Give me spreadsheets that project our future and tiny humans who clamber up and into our laps and laugh us away from our columns and into their bright blue skies of tomorrow.
Give me an ordinary love.
Give me tiny feet on top of big, black dress shoes as he spins and she twirls and he watches her with all that trust that spills out of her blue eyes and that he never drops.
Give me pizza on Friday nights and hamburgers the way he makes them.
Keep your magazines and movie endings and mad dashes through airports – just give me an ordinary love.
That I can touch and hold and snort out loud with; that I can fight and fume and cry with; that I can trust, and hope, and dream with; that I can warm my feet up against under the covers at midnight.
Give me an ordinary love.
Keep your perfect endings and Pinterest pretty and give me unshaved on Saturday mornings surrounded by the clutter of the week before and a good sense of humor as Elsa yells her morning greeting.
Keep your RomCom expectations and give me the man who wipes snow off my windscreen with a dishtowel because I can’t find the scraper.
Keep your chocolates, flowers, and one-day-a-year on the calendar countdowns and give me every day in and out and in again someone who folds the laundry and sleeps in the bottom bunk bed because his sons believe that dads can punch bears.
(I’ll take your tulips, though).
Give me an ordinary love.
That I can kiss and hold and grow old with. Unselfconsciously.
Give me an ordinary love that believes in commitment.
Give me an ordinary love that isn’t afraid of change. Of wrinkles. Of this shaped-by-children waist.
Give me an ordinary love that sees my reflection in the eyes of my children and loves me just the way I am.
Give me an ordinary love.
Give me an ordinary love that changes batteries and light bulbs, that drives the old car and mixes up the basketball times, that believes in the God of his father and mother and passes down the old stories to his sons and his daughter.
Give me an ordinary love.
Give me an ordinary love.
Give me an ordinary love.
Because with him, I’m who I want to be.
This post was inspired by Ben Rector’s extraordinary song, Ordinary Love.
Are you following me here on Facebook where I share all the kinds ordinary things that I like?
What a beautiful love “letter”. Ordinary love is the best kind of love. What a blessing!
Oh, to count the ways I love this, Lisa-Jo?! What a beautiful reminder to cherish the “ordinary love” of my life. And would you believe tulips are my fav? I held a few simple white tulips on our wedding day and just bought a few simple pink ones for my girls fourth birthday and she was smitten. Said she’d never had “real petals” before. <3 In a few days we celebrate our seventh anniversary and this post was right. on. time. for this wife and mama. Of course. ;) xoxo
Totally, ordinarily beautiful! I’d take an ordinary love any day. Thanks for reminding me of what’s important. Not the gushy romcom love, but the unpacking the dishwasher love. Genius!
LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this post, Lisa-Jo!
This was one of my favorites: “that I can warm my feet up against under the covers at midnight”
This was my very favorite: “that believes in the God of his father and mother and passes down the old stories to his sons and his daughter”
Blessings to you and yours as you continue to grow in His love!
I am learning that ordinary love is the one that thrives despite the circumstances. And I am grateful to my hubby who is good with that kind of ordinary love (even if he is off on St. Valentine’s for a weekend with guys…)
Yes. This. Off to my ordinary love. ♡♡♡
Crying. Thank you for this!
My favorite thing I’ve read today! Love this! Love my ordinary love too. He and I are getting out of dodge this weekend (we never get out of dodge) and I can’t wait! No plans but a big fluffy hotel bed without doing laundry, letting the dogs in and out, planning meals, or cleaning house. SLEEP. Oh and some other things…
Hi Lisa-Jo,
I am sharing this with a friend of mine who has stage 4 cancer right now. Her husband and I work together and he is what I jokingly, but fondly refer to as my “Work Husband”. At the same time that his wife got sick, about 11 years ago, so that she had to stop working, my husband had a devastaing stroke. My husband is still alive as is my friend, but we really do have the best husbands alive, they are both named Scott and they have been through so much but are so supportive and just the best ever. This really spoke to my heart as my husband, who is now the stay at home dad, doesn’t complain, he just does, he cleans, he cooks, he does all the laundry, everything that the “normal” mom does, he does with a smile on his face. We have 3 teenage daughters and he drives them to school, picks them up, makes sure they have lunches, snacks, everything. So, in writing this blog, I just want to say “Thank You”, to all of the husbands out there that truly are the loves of our lives and that no matter what is handed to them, they take it in stride with courage and grace and love for us.
Stephanie.
I love this. So spot-on and well put.
I don’t think there’s anything ordinary about “ordinary love.” The whole world is contorting itself into pretzels trying to find it or achieve it or make it….when it really can only be given. Ordinary love is ordinary in the way Eden was ordinary….it’s “the way things we were meant to be” ordinary. Which we know, given how horribly wrong things can and have gone, is really quite extraordinary.
I’m glad you are both blessed with an Ordinary love, from Love Himself.
For years I’ve had a hard time with ordinary anything. Being a stay-at-home mom (and moving 20 miles from town) have taught me to see the quiet, peaceful beauty in my kids, home, and marriage through each precious day. I love reading blog posts that celebrate the extraordinary within the ordinary. Thank you for your beautiful words!
This is lovely, Lisa-Jo. I’ve been reflecting and writing recently on our fascination with romantic novels and (most recently) erotica. We long for the kind of love that not just sweeps us off our feet (which happens to most of us in the beginning stages of a relationship) but warms our feet under the covers and washes our feet even when they’re smelly and dusty and the nail polish is coming undone around the edges. It’s the totally ordinary kind of love I’d choose in a heartbeat.
Thank you Lisa-Jo for opening our eyes to the moments that make our ordinary love story turn into the extraordinary!