Have you ever had a deadline on a Tuesday? I’ve had things due on Monday or Friday. Working in a church means I’ve had a lot of things due on Wednesday, but I haven’t had much of anything due on Tuesday.
Tuesday is a lost day of the week. Monday means the week is getting started. Wednesday means you’ve made it halfway through the week and let’s face it; Thursday night starts the weekend now. Friday, Saturday, and Sunday are the weekend, and then, we’re back to Monday. Nobody celebrates Tuesday.
Several years ago, I was asked to perform the wedding ceremony for my son and daughter-in-law. I’ve done too many weddings to count, but as you can imagine, this was different. I felt a different kind of pressure this time. I lost count of the pages I ripped out of my notebook after having scratched through another failed attempt to get my remarks just right.
For some reason, I looked at my notebook and saw that sometime earlier I had written “Tuesday” at the top of my notebook. I have no idea why I had written that word there. I had forgotten what I was trying to remember by writing “Tuesday” on the top of my notepad. Yet, as I saw the word there, I knew what I was supposed to say to the newlyweds.
I was to tell them about “Tuesday.”
When we fall in love, we believe our lives will be filled with roses and fireworks. When we’re dating, every moment is special. We’re going out to eat and to the movies. We’re going out to events and seeing friends. Nothing is boring. We’re in love and everything is magic.
Then, you get married and life turns into a lot of Tuesdays. Laundry must be done, and meals have to be cooked. The lawn must be mowed, and cars have to have their oil changed. Life requires a lot of work and most of this work is boring.
Fireworks don’t go off when you pick up your children’s toys. There’s no magic in picking up the dry-cleaning. This is when life is done. Marriages are built, and lives find meaning and purpose in those moments where nothing special seems to be happening. The success of your marriage, the success of your life, depends on how well you do on Tuesdays.
For years, my sons thought I was a strange man. There are lots of reasons for this, but the one they tormented me most about was my wish for them to be little boys again so they would sit in my lap and I could smell their hair. They thought the act of smelling hair was a little strange. It probably is, but it’s one of the things I miss most since my boys have become men. Thirty-eight-year-old men don’t let you smell their hair.
These are the kinds of things that happen on Tuesdays. The little things that make life worth it. Taping a child’s crayon-scribbled “art” to the front of the refrigerator. Reading the Bible and grasping a new truth and learning to apply that truth to your living…that happens on Tuesday.
Holding hands with your spouse. Sharing a new recipe with friends – all these moments are what makes our lives worth living.
The wisest among us have always known that it is the joy of the mundane things that give our lives its true magic.
These days, everything in our lives has to be “super!” and when they’re not, we’re disappointed. We begin to think we’ve missed out on something. We look for ways to cause our adrenaline to pump. We crave the exciting, the overwhelming, and the “once in a lifetime” moments.
But life isn’t like that. Most of our lives are spent doing the mundane things that life requires. If we are wise, if we are perceptive, we’re able to see the beauty in these everyday moments. We learn to enjoy the simple things.
We learn to live well on Tuesdays.
So, enjoy your Tuesday. There’s nothing special about it. There’s nothing magical for you to see. It’s just Tuesday. One of those miraculous, mundane moments of the ordinary, and I pray we’ll be able to see the grace in every one of our Tuesdays.
