Is your life of the sort that has you daydreaming of normal?

Lately, I’ve been known to cry out at certain family members that I just need “five minutes of normal!”

It’s a theme I’ve heard from the families with whom I work, too – this screaming desire for normalcy. No one can describe it, exactly, but we all know we’re not experiencing it.

Parents raising children who don’t react to life’s every day experiences like the majority of other children often long for a few moments of normal and then wrestle with the guilt of envying other parents. They don’t want other children; they just want what, from the outside, looks, well, normal.

Life can be maddening when “normal” is the benchmark you strive to claim.

And with all the testing and analyzing we humans do to each other, it’s no wonder that normal appears to be our MOST desirable destination.

But, you don’t often hear normal people reveling in their normalcy, do you?

So, that’s made me wonder – do you think when we get to heaven, we’ll be normal?

Normal isn’t a term used very often in the Bible.

Paul makes reference to the fact that he didn’t become an apostle in the “normal” way: “He appeared to James. Then he appeared to all the apostles. Last of all, he also appeared to me. I was like someone who wasn’t born at the right time or in a normal way.” I Corinthians 15:7-8

Paul wasn’t putting down his experience, just distinguishing it from the others, as comparing a baby born early to those who arrive full-term.

But that’s it.

There’s no command to be normal.

There’s no description of our resurrected bodies that includes the term “normal.”

There are no Biblical heroes whose chief virtue is that they are normal.

Jesus was anything but normal.

So, I have to conclude, with admittedly scant theological research on the topic, that when we get to heaven, we will not be normal.


We’ll be complete.

We’ll be whole.

We’ll be accepted, loved, redeemed, restored, resurrected, and glorious.

We’ll be home, at last.

We’ll be like Jesus.

And we will no longer long to be normal.

Normal will cease to be a necessary measure. Normal will no longer be the goal.

Normal will seem like a part of this story that falls off like the skin of a caterpillar when it emerges with wings.


A butterfly is not a caterpillar that has become normal.

A butterfly is a caterpillar transformed and complete.

So, I’m thinking that if eternal normalcy is not our aim, we can let it go as a goal in this life.

We don’t really need to be normal.


We just need to love and be loved by the God of the Universe.

Maybe we can loosen our grip on the goal of normal.

And look forward to trying out our wings.

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1 Comment

The Conversation

1. Cheri says:

   February 10, 2012 at 11:09 pm

   Wonderful post, Lori!!

   God bless,
   Cheri

   Reply