Do you ever feel like all you do in life is push harder, strive more, and run faster? I know I’ve felt like that. However, I didn’t realize I was doing this until recently. I spent some time being honest with myself, and what I found is that I spent far too much time worrying about how to get myself ahead. I don’t mean how to get head of others necessarily, but just how to get ahead. How to achieve and reach my “dreams” and my “ideal life”. Whether that be getting ahead socially, in a career, or even spiritually.

Why do I do this? Fear of being ordinary.

Let me back up and explain. An opportunity presented itself to me this summer. The short story is that if I took this opportunity my life would change a lot, but it would change in all the ways I always wanted it to. It would bring me so much closer to everything I ever dreamed of doing. When I was presented with the opportunity, I thought I would be so overjoyed but something inside me just didn’t feel excited about it. I tried to pull myself together. “Be happy, this is what you’ve worked and worked for”, I told myself this over and over, hoping I would start to believe it. But I didn’t. All I could think about was the fact that I am only 19 and I already felt tired of working. Tired of striving. Sick of trying to lead an extraordinary life.

Unable to shake my uneasy feeling, I decided to not take the opportunity. I spent the next couple days wrestling with why I let this chance pass.

In all honesty, I’m still not totally sure why I did. But I know that I made the right decision. Since saying “no”, God has showed me a lot about myself.

I spend too much time trying to make myself special. Trying to make myself extraordinary, making sure that no one will look at me and think “ordinary”. But the truth is, “ordinary” is exactly what I am. I am utterly and completely ordinary, and I love it. Don’t misunderstand me and think that I believe I am ordinary, and therefore, can’t do amazing things. I serve a great God who can do extraordinary things. But that’s the thing, HE can do extraordinary things, not me. I can only hope but to be His vessel. That’s what I was missing before. I was stuck in a pattern of thinking that if I wanted something, I would make it happen through my own hard work. I realize now I’m merely an ordinary girl, hoping to be a vessel that God uses for extraordinary things.

So to sum it up, this is what I’m trying to say. Ordinary is a misunderstood word. I used to run from this word, hoping it would never be used to describe me. But now I embrace the ordinary in myself. Because the way I see it, to be ordinary is to step aside and let God be the extraordinary one.