The Last Ordinary Day

There is a day in my life I did not know was significant while I was living it.

We were in the car. And something in me went cold before my mind had caught up. I did not finish the thought.

I said, let me get out. I am going to drive.

And I drove straight to the emergency room, as fast as that car would take me.

They told me almost at once what my body had already known. My husband was having a stroke. There was a bleed in his brain.

That was the end of the last ordinary day.

The whole story is in my memoir, and it takes chapters, because a day like that does not end when the sun goes down.

But what I want to talk about here is that phrase. The last ordinary day. Because I think you have had one too, and nobody has ever helped you name it.

Here is what nobody tells you about the day that divides your life in half.

It does not announce itself. There is no music. You wake up in it like any other morning. You are annoyed about small things. You have plans for the weekend.

And then the phone rings, or the doctor comes back in, or somebody says a sentence, and you cross a line you did not know was there.

Some of you are reading this in your last ordinary day and do not know it. That is simply the truth of being human. But that is not a reason to live braced. It is a reason to notice today. To look at the person across the table while they are still across the table. To say the thing while there is somebody to say it to.

Psalm 90:12 says, so teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom. That verse is not morbid. It is a prayer for the ability to value what is in front of you while it is still in front of you.

And Scripture does not hide these days. It records them. Job is a man with everything, and inside a single chapter four messengers arrive back to back. In one afternoon his entire life was rewritten. And what does he do? He falls down. He worships. And he says, the Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

Now hear me carefully. That is not a man who felt fine. Read the next thirty-seven chapters. He argues, he laments, he curses the day he was born. Both things are in the same book. Worship on day one and anguish for chapters afterward, and God did not rebuke him for either.

And here is the anchor for the after. Hebrews 13:8 says Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever. Everything on your side of that line changed. Nothing on His side did. He is exactly the same God He was on your last ordinary day, and He was already standing in your after before you got there.

Deuteronomy 31:8 says, and the Lord, he it is that doth go before thee; he will be with thee, he will not fail thee, neither forsake thee. He goes before. When you walked into the after, He had already been there. You arrived somewhere new. He did not.

First, give yourself time, because the crossing does not happen all at once. You do not absorb the full weight of it in one moment. You understand it slowly. Over days. Over months. And with each new piece of understanding, something inside you has to adjust again.

Lamentations 3:22 says it is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning. New every morning. Not delivered in one lump sum at the beginning. Rationed daily, because that is how the after gets crossed. One morning's worth at a time.

Second, stop trying to see the whole road. Psalm 119:105 says thy word is a lamp unto my feet, and a light unto my path. A lamp for the feet lights the next step, not the whole highway. That is not God being stingy. That is God giving you exactly enough to move.

Third, let people in now rather than later. Galatians 6:2 says bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. And Ecclesiastes says woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not another to help him up.

And fourth, watch for God in the small mechanics of it. I have thought many times about that moment in the car, when something in me knew before I could explain it. I do not think that was nerves. I think that was God, and I think He was already at work in the last few minutes of the last ordinary day, before I knew there was anything to be at work about. Isaiah 65:24 says, and it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear. Before they call. God was moving before you knew to ask.