An Ordinary Life of Un-Missed Magic

When you arise in the morning,

think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive -

to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

-Marcus Aurelius

I cast a long-legged shadow across the Kansas plains today as I took a walk and drew deep, full breaths. I like the openness here. I like the music of the prairie. I like the wail of the wind at your back. I like that I can swallow and absorb the very winds God stirred into being.

There's something quietly powerful about this place. About packing a picnic dinner and pulling over alongside a deserted farm and spreading your mother's quilt over last season's wheat. About tucking your knees to your chest and eating a ham sandwich and watching the sun sink like a stone. It was romantically magical - like a swarm of fireflies or a glittering, watery rainbow - and over and over I thought of that line from my favorite Jamie Cullum song: how 'when I look back on my ordinary, ordinary life, I see so much magic 'though I missed it at the time'.

And I don't ever, ever want to be a magic misser. I want to be the girl who tucks her knees underneath her chin and breathes and thinks and enjoys and loves as the sun falls to its golden bed beneath a world of wind and windmills. I want to be that girl... the girl with an ordinary life of un-missed magic.