Last night, we went to a nearby Catholic school to watch a high school girls softball game. It was my first since I was at college, but that might not count. I was only there to see the Angel, so maybe a game happened, maybe our school won, maybe they played with NERF balls or in ball gowns, maybe, but who could possibly care? Not me, that’s for sure. I had been away for 2 months in California, wasting time post-graduation, and spent most of those 2 months with my brother, sister and their cats, listening to music, writing, and missing my special lady.

Anyway, last night. After an extra inning, our school won. How did I end up at a high school softball game? For a very similar reason to the one in which I previously found myself at a softball game; a girl. My son has a girlfriend who is a star. I know she’s a terrific athlete, but it’s one thing to hear it and another altogether to see it. In the extra inning, with runners on 2nd and 3rd, she came to the plate… I can’t remember anything in baseball being as much of a foregone conclusion. Baseball is a very difficult game, a “high-failure” sport, where nothing is certain. Except this. These runs would score, everyone there knew it, and a bases clearing triple later, we were all proven right.

Earlier in the day, I gave communion to some friends in their living room. (This is something I hadn’t done before, and it’s something I’ll do again.) The man is ill, the prognosis is not too great, but we shared that moment in our sadness and our care, giving each other and God our presence, the most priceless of gifts we ever truly have to offer. I told them I loved them, and left a couple of hours before the eclipse.

As far as the eclipse, the schools closed early, so my family (all 4 of us) and the softball superhero stood outside in those ridiculous looking glasses looking up through the clouds at the sun.

I’m not sure I was overwhelmed by the eclipse, or what I was feeling, but it was big and heavy and significant. Saturday, we attended a funeral for my cousin. I had the honor of speaking, and I chose to speak about my favorite passage in the Scriptures: “Surely God was in this place, and I was unaware.”

Incidentally, I have quite a few favorite passages, but this one holds special meaning to me. You see, I missed so much of my dad before he passed. And I have missed so much of you, missed so much of my cousin, and missed so much of me.

This post is full of GREAT BIG MOMENTS, but our lives are made up of what is often mistakenly called “ordinary” time. This “ordinary” time is so easily missed, and only then do we realize that it was never ordinary at all, never common. It, and we, are wildly unique and spectacular. A ticket agent’s help in Dallas who was “just” doing her job, a softball dad’s handshake, a dog laying on the floor in a living room while 4 people share communion, laughing at the dinner table, and walking outside in the grass…when did we stop realizing these things were miracles of divine presence? Love isn’t only rose petals and grand gestures, and life isn’t always extra inning RBI triples, it’s sometimes pushing shopping carts & quiet nights reading in bed. It’s not always mountaintops, it’s simply ok. And I don’t have to tell you that other times, it’s heartbreaking.

But these are our lives, each of our todays are gifts, God is in all of these places, and it’s really time to stop missing them, stop taking them for granted, believing the lies that they are anything other than wonderfully, fantastically extraordinary.