When something this tragic happens in your community, and when it affects so many people that you love, and when it strikes such young and vibrant people...it makes the ordinary tasks of life seem so trivial. So unimportant. So insignificant.

If life is so punctuated, why oh why must we spend time doing the things that seem not to matter? Why do we have to do the things that do not evoke passion? Wouldn't it be better if all our time was poured into hugging and kissing? To sitting together for hours? To going out and doing big things? To saying all the things that we are thinking but can't find the right words or the right time to say them?

And then, in the pause of grief and sadness, I see it- the value of the menial. I remind myself that some of the fullest living happens at home-- not necessarily out trekking across Antarctic (my girls loved following her journey) or swinging from the most awesome rope swing ever (doesn't that look rad??).

But instead I tell myself that...

scrubbing away dirt,