No Such Thing As Normal

One of the greatest thrills that a parent can have is when their little one sees them, clearly recognizes them, and calls them by name. Another cool time is when they take their first step. The other day, I had lunch with a family where there were four generations in the room. It was very cool seeing great-grandparents holding the little babies and talking about all the things that have happened in between the child’s grandparents and parent’s lives. Stories about life. Watching folks grow and change and become people who then produce other people and raise them.

When my wife died, more years ago than it feels, someone came up to me and said, “Welcome to the new normal.” At the time, I wasn’t all that thrilled about being welcomed to anything related to my wife leaving me. But on and off I’ve been thinking about what he said.

Maybe it’s because I’m older, maybe even old, that I’m able to see something that I think is true. Let me run it by you and you can tell me what you think.

There is no such thing as normal. Normal suggests sameness or status quo or things happening in a regular and consistent way. Normal is what we expect, but it seldom if ever occurs. Things do happen “regularly” until they don’t. But this just illustrates what I’m talking about.

Here’s how things actually work. We wake up in the morning, get ourselves and all the kids ready for school, but this day someone spills their milk. Not normal? Someone else can’t get their hair to work. Not normal? Someone needs a new pair of shoes because they either wore them out or outgrew them. Normal?

Some might say that the change is what makes it normal. It is normal that things change. I might agree with that, but then how does my wife’s death fit into that? Is it a new normal? Or is it part of the normal? And if her death is part of normal and if all change is part of the thing we call normal, then what is normal about it anyway?

Normal naturally means sameness. It is normal that the sun comes up. It is normal that my computer does what it does. And when it doesn’t, it throws my normal all out of whack.

So, no, change can’t be part of normal. Change destroys the normal.

But here’s the thing I think I’ve noticed: We think things are normal, even when there are changes, because those are acceptable or accountable changes. When the changes are small or wonderful, we think they fit into what we perceive as normal for our lives. When the changes are things we don’t like or don’t want, “normal” changes.

Further, the things that change in such a way that our normal is thrown off are things that are out of our control. And the changes that happen that we do like or anticipate, are things that are also out of our control, but we don’t think of them that way because we like them.

It’s a little bit like when we say we submit to God as long as he asks us to do things we already wanted to do. We think we are submitting, but when he tells us to do something we’d rather not do, we disobey, or we have a huge fight inside ourselves. Which is really obedience? Are we really obeying if we do what God says to do when we already wanted to do it? Or are we submitting our will to his when we do what we didn’t want to do in the first place? Or maybe both?

I think both situations might be acts of submission, but maybe not. The way you know the difference is whether you obey normally when you don’t already want to do what God asks. If you obey in those situations, then you are probably being submissive when he asks you to do something you already want to do. If you don’t submit normally when you don’t want to do it, then you probably aren’t submitting when he asks you to do something you want to do. 

But I digress, a little bit.

In the area of normal, I want to say, first that there is no such thing as normal. Everything changes all the time. It just does it very very slowly—normally. How often have you seen a person you knew as a small child and then saw them as an adult and thought, “Wait, they’re only six. How did they get so big?” Or think about the instances that started this article, your little one is now going off to high school and it was just the other day you were changing her diapers and teaching her to brush her teeth. Changes happens slowly, but it happens all the time and destroys what we thought was normal.

Second, I wonder if what we think of as normal is related to what we think of as our control of the situation. When change happens slowly and to our liking, we’re okay with it because, while it is out of our control, it doesn’t get in the way of our agenda and in fact might be in line with what we want for our lives. But if the change is too fast or too large or not to our liking, we come unglued because, “Who said the world could change without my permission?” This kind of change rattles our cages. It shakes us up. It goes against the grain of how we think the universe should be running (serving us).

As Christians we know that everything is in God’s hands and that he sovereign over everything and nothing happens that he doesn’t want, cause, oversee, and superintend. At the same time, though we don’t often say it out loud, when hard things happen, we often think, “Who does he think he is messing in my life like that?” So, ultimately, we are angry with God for not running the universe the way we want him to. We want to be in charge and change we don’t want or change we don’t notice isn’t something consistent with our rule of our own lives. It messes with our “normal.”

But in reality, nothing is normal, life is always changing. It either changes in ways we like, or it changes in ways we’d rather it not. What we need to acknowledge is that it never changes according to our wills, but rather according to God’s will. He is and ever will be God. God over everything.

When realize this and submit our wills to its truthfulness, we can confess the sin of trying to be God in the universe, at least our little universe. We can rethink who is in control and really submit ourselves and our lives and the lives of people we think we are responsible for, to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

There are all sorts of things that happen to us and around us when we think we control everything. We become micromanagers. We become bitter when no one around us pays attention to our sovereignty. We can get ulcers from worrying that things aren’t going to work out right. We tie ourselves up in knots because we know in our bones that Jesus is Lord, and he won’t share his glory with anyone else. I’m convinced that this attitude produces all sorts of physical problems for people. All this doesn’t even mention the guilt and shame of not being able to save, fix, prepare, motivate, etc. people to live the way we want them to live.

The good news is that when we confess our sin, God forgives us of the sin and cleanses us from all our shamefulness (1 Jn 1:9). When we repent and give the universe back to his control (in our minds, he never relinquished it to us at all), we are able to realize that there is no such thing as normal and we can rejoice in the changes—all of them. We can anticipate them with joy (Jas 1:2). We can glory in the things we suffer (Rom 5:3). We can even boast in the hard things that happen in our lives (2 Cor 12:9-10).

Maybe there is a normal. But if there is it is that God is in his heavens, Jesus is on the throne, and we are living in front of him giving him glory in whatever comes our way. Our lives are mists, blowing about, changing, shifting, coming, and going (Jas 4:14). But Jesus is Lord, and he is active in his kingdom, in our lives.

I hope this helps.

Image by Baptiste Lheurette from Pixabay