Writing Beautiful Stories With Our Ordinary Everyday Lives.

As a writer, the question, “what story are you writing?” is likely about content or words on a page. Yet, not all of us enjoy putting pen to paper. Not all of us desire to fill pages that later become a book or use pictures or poetry to tell our stories. Not all of us create imaginary worlds that become wondrous bedtime stories for little ones. But we are still all writing stories.

What story are you writing?

History tells stories of Kings and Queens, leaders, both good and bad; those stories often become no more than information in history books. Consider what stories impact us most? —think back to the recent presidential inauguration in the United States. It was a day filled with famous people, leaders, and history in the making. Yet, the most shared stories on my newsfeed were about a young poet, just twenty-two, who spoke beauty into our hearts and a firefighter who said the pledge of allegiance in two languages simultaneously. What impacted us most were the stories of ordinary people who did ordinary things in an extraordinary way.

When I think of stories lived out, the ones that have impacted me, I think of my grandparents. No longer with us, their stories do not live between the pages of a book; a million copies sold. Instead, their stories live in memories and the way they influenced others in their ordinary everyday lives. The majority of our stories are small, told close to home, among family and friends. And we often fail to recognize the value in the story we are speaking with our lives.

So I ask, what stories are we writing as we live out mundane, unextraordinary everyday lives?

What does it look like to write beautiful stories living our everyday lives in extraordinary ways?

We can change the world, but if the price of changing the world leaves our home unattended, we have failed to recognize our most significant impact.

Joy Marker

Most often, when we think of making a difference, we think outside our house. Considering ways we can volunteer, use our time and resources to make the world a better place. It is easy to get so focused on doing for others we fail to do for those we love most. Yes, we can impact others outside our home and make a difference, but at what cost? If we do nothing else with our ordinary lives, raising kids to become well adjusted, others focused adults, that might just be our most significant contribution to the world. And that in itself is a beautiful story.

Writing beautiful stories happens as we begin to see the beauty in the mundane work of tending the garden, cooking meals, washing dishes, or reading one hundred bedtime stories every night. It’s about perspective, asking ourselves what story we want our children to read from our lives? What story are we writing about our marriages, our homes, our communities? What matters most, and does our ordinary everyday life represent that story?

Most of us write stories that expand beyond our homes, family, and friends. Our stories include the communities where we live, work, and even volunteer. For some of us, our stories are lived more out loud than others. Expanding into social media, travel, causes that reach beyond our towns and cities. And for a few, their stories will spread beyond borders into the big wide world. Yet, no matter where our story is told, it is a story that matters, a story that can make a difference, maybe even change the world.

While we do not all write stories with pen and paper, we all tell stories with our ordinary everyday lives.

Let’s live out our ordinary stories in extraordinary ways.

Joy Marker

If you are interested in reflecting more on the story, you are writing in your ordinary everyday moments. Here are two great books by Emily P. Freeman about living in the small everyday moments and uncovering the beauty and art you were made to live