What is normal?

The pains of normal or not being normal, everyone has them.

I look back over my life and some of my relationships with family and friends have been "normal" while others, well.........not so much.  But what does this really mean and how do we adapt to whatever "our normal" is?

I've learned over the past three years that Bennett going off to college brought a different type of normalcy to the house than when he joined the Air Force. When a child goes off to college most of us know they will be coming home a few times a semester, parents go and visit their kids at school, you meet their new friends, you still get to do their laundry. When a child joins the military everyone has to learn a new normal.  This isn't bad it just something new to learn. The longest we have gone without seeing Bennett is 7 months and that was a surprise to us because we actually thought it was going to be a little more than a year before we saw him again. When your child is in the service they have so much to adapt to, so much to make their own normal....meeting new people, then maybe saying goodbye quicker than hoped, moving to new places, leaving behind what they know and have been comfortable with, they are independent and now do their own laundry! Everyone in the family has to find new ways to make all of our schedules work so we carve out that special calling time on Sunday evening. This is our new normal.

Others face different types of normal....a passing of a loved one, a divorce, a loss of a job, a bad grade, a new church, the list could go on for miles.

How we cope, grow, and press on, is different for each of us in search of our normal.  I've learned that no one is "normal" and sometimes the Norman Rockwell picture just explodes or is enough to make you want to puke. Everyone must find their path.  Their way to stay connected to those they love or things they love to do in spite of the ever changing world around them.

My mom recently shared with me she has come to terms that her remaining years on earth will not be as she had pictured as a young woman.  She is excepting her normal.  This for her means my family will not be living close by and Sunday dinners with all the family are not a common theme for us. She isn't alone in wishing families still lived close by and shared weekly meals together but she had to understand her normal is a few special dinners a year.

A friend who lost her spouse said, I just had to learn how to be me without him right here with me. She isn't alone in having lost a loved one but she had to find her new normal.

Another friend's son is heading into the teenage years. Gone is the normal cuddle time it is replaced by the tempermental, hormonal teenager.  Ah, the new normal for a few years.

A long distance relationship is not the same as when you leave in the same city.
 Both can have normalcy - it is their own.

During this Advent season I am reflecting on the birth of Christ, the life of Christ, the death and resurrection of Christ.  None of it was "normal".


So the next time someone says to me - that's just not normal.  I think I will respond, What is normal?