I pulled the bread out of the cabinet to make toast, and watched the bread slide down with a metallic click. I thought, I need a special plate today. Sometimes you need to feel like each day is worthy of celebration.

I pulled the pink plate from the cupboard and the memory floaded in before I could stop it. My Mom and I had decorated her kitchen table with this glassware complete with goblets and lace tablecloth and flowers at each place setting. I don’t even remember what the occasion was and it doesn’t matter now.  I have been missing her.

I cried all through my toast.

I wonder if she knows how my heart is bound up with hers and how often I think of her a hundred little moments every day. She was the first one to teach me about the small wonders. I worry about when I will lose her. I worry that I can’t help her more. I know how long her days are, how they’re filled with serving others, with few moments for herself.

I remember the last time I was home and I fixed her lunch, she was so thankful……for that one small thing.

I went about the day feeling her nearness. You feel the impact someone has had on your life when hard times hit and you realize you’ve silently picked up the baton they’ve passed you without even knowing it.

I was finding peace in the tasks……the folding of the clothes, making up the beds, watering the plants. The peace in going on, living out hope in my actions.

She has never let me forget that we are a people who have passed from death to life, and for that there is always a reason for joy. It’s the grafting into our hearts this one thing that fans the flame of wonder more than any other.

If you suddenly found out you didn’t have the cancer they thought you had it would be easy to find the wonder in all those little things we may even think of as mundane.

All her friends and family have heard her say many times, “If you can’t find anything to laugh about you might as well go out behind the garage and shoot yourself.”  That’s assuming the garage is in the back of the house, I am guessing.

Last night I shared with Elaine what I was going to write about today.  She was taming down her inflammed throat with a popsicle and vigorously nodded her head. When she could talk, the tears that had yet to come since her Dad’s death filled her eyes.  

She told me how one of her co-workers had come up to her and said, “You are a Godly woman, and God is with you. He will never give you more than you can handle.” Sometimes you just need that affirmation.

Personally, I believe that God gives us more than we can handle just so we’ll have to lean on Him.

Earlier in the day, she was sitting in her bus, sick, tired, grieved and weary-worn, when a little cactus wren landed on her side mirror and stared at her and sung his heart out. A little spark of hope just when she needed it most.

He uses common, ordinary, everyday things to speak to us, just like He uses common, ordinary, everyday us to do extraordinary things through Him.

Things like pink plates and silly little birds.

And you and I.

Thank you Margaret Feinberg for this wonderful book, I am sorry to see it end, but I will do my best to keep the wonder alive and tell everyone I know about this book!