Searching for Joy in the Dailiness of Life

I’ll be really honest. I wasn’t super enthused about making a cake. We had spent the last week fighting jet lag, planning a party, and trying to adjust back to another week of homeschool. Though I really wanted to make an anniversary cake for my husband’s grandparents, on that particular Saturday morning the reality of the whole process felt cumbersome.

I walked myself slowly through the steps:
Grease the pan. Scoop of flour. Tap, tap, tap to coat every inch.
Level the batter. Pour and bake. Cool the cakes on a wire rack.
Clean the counter. Beat the butter. Add the sugar one cup at a time.
Pour vanilla. Spread the dye. Fill the bags and pipe.

Yet something happened between the batter and the butter. As I moved through the steps, my body re-entered a familiar dance. Every move came back to me, not only in memory but with a deeper recognition of delight. These motions were ones I had been fashioned to love. This tune was an old friend. And this dance—it was one God had created for me to follow. I piped each flower with a smile and eagerly pushed myself to create more. I remembered how sweet creating with sugar truly was, and I basked in the joy.

Joy is kind of like that—hiding itself between the mundane and the cumbersome. Our towering to-do lists take center stage, and life becomes a series of boxes to check. Even our favorite forms of play hold difficulties that chip away at our excitement about tackling another crafting project or afternoon in the garden. “Do we really have to start that task?” we groan. We are far too like our predecessors in the wilderness, with eyes on the difficult and hearts that so easily forget the miraculous.

Yet sometimes the miraculous breaks through anyway. It cuts through our exhaustion and the chatter of our brains and turns our reluctant trudge through this world into a dance. Randall Jarrell depicts this masterfully in his poem, "Well Water” with another metaphor. The narrator echoes our malaise of the never ending “errand upon errand” as he pulls up the water from the well. But not every errand ends the same:

And yet sometimes
The wheel turns of its own weight, the rusty
Pump pumps over your sweating face the clear
Water, cold, so cold! you cup your hands
And gulp from them the dailiness of life.

The dailiness of life holds not only drudgery, but a miracle, Jarrell claims. What miracle exactly? There could be many different answers to that question. I can supply many, but right now I can’t help but answer that question by looking back to those Israelites who overlooked their own miracle. I’m not talking about the powerful plagues and the rescue from Egypt (though they surely forgot about those). I’m talking about a greater miracle: God Almighty, the Creator of everything had called them his people. He had placed them within a greater story and with a greater purpose—one that would have a beautiful end (Ex. 3:17). Yet with eyes on the temporary, they forgot this miracle. They forgot the beautiful and purposeful dance the Lord had invited them into.

That’s the miracle I see waiting in the cool gulp from the dailiness of life. Our lives aren’t just a set of random actions, some pleasant, some unpleasant. These actions are going somewhere. They have purpose, worth, and they are beautiful. It’s why I felt joy that afternoon with my cake, and my drudgery turned into a dance. Because as I mixed icing the inconveniences of life faded in the background, and I remembered, I was made for this. No, not only cake, but that afternoon I delighted in God’s gifts and remembered one of my purposes of life is to bring beauty into this world- even if it’s a buttercream rose.

We all get pulled into these dances throughout our day. It might be at play within a basketball game with friends—when our hearts knock at us and whisper—this is something greater than you that you’re a part of. We might feel the same tug as we’re standing in front of a painting in a museum or we’re carefully pruning our tomato plant. Yet the miracle waits even in the everyday moments of our lives. That zoom call at work might feel pointless, but it’s your part in a greater song of the kingdom being built on this earth. Those dishes may feel endless, but they are one more building block of a masterpiece on the stage of history.

Beneath every bit of toil, play, repetition, and dailiness of life sits a miracle. We have a Father who carefully made us and holds us. We have purpose with every work in this world. We have a destination that is beautiful.

And because of that miracle, we can lighten our feet and dance.

If you’re interested particularly in the way God allows our favorite hobbies to fulfill our purpose, check out my book Created to Play: How Taking Hobbies Seriously Grows Us Spiritually.