Ordinary days

One of my favorite books from last year has a wonderful title. It's called The Magic of Ordinary Days. I loved thinking about that. The older I get the more I am struck by how much of who we are is a result of what we do on ordinary days. I see the cumulative effect of many ordinary days spent exercising when I look at my wonderfully healthy and ageless in-laws. I see many ordinary days of serving in the temple and completely faithful visiting teaching and home teaching when I see my parents' spiritual strength and depth. I see many ordinary days spent working in the garden when I am amazed by my sister's beautiful yard and produce. I see days and days of riding a bike to work as hard as he can and sweat flying off of an elliptical trainer when I watch my husband eat whatever he likes and never gain weight.

It especially makes me think about what I do with my ordinary days. Do I want to be the kind of mom who leaves piles of laundry lingering in the laundry room? Because if I do that enough, that becomes who I am. Do I want to be the kind of mom whose kids often see her reading the scriptures? Or do I want to be the kind of mom whose kids often see her playing computer games? Today I want to be the kind of lady who uses the wheat in her food storage to make bread, instead of the lady who chickens out and hits Great Harvest instead. I want to be the woman who has companions for her mind the authors of the best books instead of filling her mind with vacuous tripe.

As I've been thinking about it I've come across a number of quotes that are very relevant to this subject. Here are some of the ones that I try to remember regularly:

"What I do is me. For this I came." -Margaret Smoot. From a talk given in YW when I was in high school.

"The things that matter most are the things you do every day."

and "The days are long but the years are short." -Gretchen Rubin in The Happiness Project

"Determine never to be idle...It is wonderful how much may be done if we are always doing." -Thomas Jefferson

"The more you practice, the better you get." -Jennifer Mitchell, Willa's strings teacher