Ordinary Wonders

By Nancy Kuykendall

Some of the most wondrous and extraordinary things are all around us, yet we often miss seeing them. Some are so small they can easily be overlooked if we aren't paying attention. Some are large, yet we still miss seeing them.

 

Circumstances in life sometimes seem one sided, yet there are often two sides to be seen if one might stop and ponder them. New ways of seeing and thinking about our surroundings and circumstances is what Ordinary Wonders is all about. It is noticing the wonders in the most ordinary of days or the most ordinary of things. It's about the many wonders there for one's enjoyment and sometimes to teach a lesson.

 

Ordinary Wonders is about God's many gifts as seen and experienced by the author herself. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nancy Kuykendall
• Release date: Feb 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9798201983185

Nancy Kuykendall

Nancy Kuykendall is a life-long musician who has taught music, served consistently as a church musician, and performed for a wide variety of events. Nancy and her musician husband, Steve, serve together in their church and have performed together throughout their marriage. Nancy retired after a thirty-year teaching career to seriously pursue her desire to write. Her inspiration comes from her experiences, surroundings, circumstances, life events, people and pets, and her relationship with God. She is the author of five other non-fiction books: Mornings on the Porch, Ordinary Wonders, Our Daily Moments, Now I Lay Me Down TO SLEEP, and God is Not Silent - One woman's encounters with God. She has written a fictional series: The Old Woman - Book One - Meet Rose,  The Old Woman - Book Two - A New Year, and The Old Woman - Book Three - A Time of Change. Nancy and her husband make their home in North Dakota.

Book preview

For

Steve,

Jason, Ryan, and Amy

Ordinary Wonders

Nancy Kuykendall

Foreword

Ordinary. Ordinary is one of those words most people don’t like to hear. It often brings with it the idea or thoughts of being boring, mundane, uninteresting, second best, plain, simple and the list goes on. One of the tragedies in our society today is the attitude that ordinary should have no place in a person’s life, regardless of what it pertains to. We too often focus our sights on the big, the grandiose and the spectacular in our daily living, rushing through our days always striving for something bigger and better. We often live with the attitude that we must always be busy focusing on the big things. The consequence of that attitude is that we miss out on the beauty of the ordinary in our world.

Nancy Kuykendall’s newest book Ordinary Wonders is all about recognizing the beauty of the ordinary in life. It’s about seeing majesty in the simple, common ordinary things we too often bypass or just plain dismiss, which is tragic. Through Nancy’s stories, she brings to life the awesome wonders of those things we too often call ordinary, when they are anything but ordinary. She speaks to us encouraging us to recognize the wonder, to see the handiwork of God in all things and to see the beauty he created and recognize his presence in our lives.

To you, the reader, I want to encourage you to sit back in your favorite chair, maybe with a cup of coffee at hand, and let these pages come to life through the stories Nancy is sharing. Let her stories talk to you and inspire you to recognize the beauty of the ordinary in your life through her personal experiences. Allow her to help you change your thinking about the ordinary, so that when you think of ordinary things you’ll see them in a new light - the new light of the beauty in the ordinary wonders all around us.

Andy Heller

Preface

Ididn’t know I would write a second book, but then, originally I didn’t know I would write a first book. When I felt the calling and urging to write the first one , Mornings on the Porch, a book of non-fiction short stories, I finished it not realizing, at first, that I wanted to write more.

Apparently, I wasn’t quite through telling short stories because I immediately started writing more stories before the first book was through production. I thought the idea was acceptable, since two of my favorite books, A Touch of Wonder and Through Many Windows by Arthur Gordon are books of short stories.  As it so happened, I had the second book of stories well underway and I decided to see it through. 

Ordinary Wonders is a collection of non-fiction, short stories about ordinary things and circumstances - reflections on things that are common to most of us. It is also stories of different ways of looking at a certain thing or experience. Since we are all different, we might not react in the same way to new experiences or think the same way about a given set of circumstances or subject matter. Yet, we can all find wonder in ordinary things, if we look, and we can experience new ways of looking at and thinking about the ordinary. We can see the wonder in our world and can expand how we experience these wonders and think about them.

As I also mentioned in Mornings on the Porch, if any of these stories strike a chord with you or speak to you in any way, I am thrilled, and honored. We are each created unique individuals, yet our human experience is much the same. Though God made us each one of a kind, we share the same world. God’s wonders and blessings are there for all of us.

The stories in Ordinary Wonders can be read in any order. You can start at the beginning, or at the end or even in the middle. You can jump around and read in any order. It will not matter as there is no set order other than, except for a small change, the stories are listed in the order I wrote them.

Nancy

Acknowledgement

I’d like to thank family and friends for encouraging me along the way on this new project. I appreciate your support and encouraging words. It means a lot and helps spur me on.

I thank the readers out there who have honored me by asking for another book and tell me they eagerly await having this one in their hands. Thank you for your interest and support. This book was written with you in mind.

Thank you to those who have helped me get this book into shape. Each one has offered suggestions that have proved helpful and were needed. Thank you Tina Kleinhaus for taking the time to read my words and respond while having so many other things on your mind. I appreciate your willingness. Thank you Doug and Debbie Haeussler for so graciously entering into my writing world and helping with the giving of your time and helpful remarks. It is much appreciated. Andy Heller, thank you for your suggestions and ongoing support. You can be a wealth of knowledge. Dave and Candy McDowell thank you for the never ending generosity of time and effort on my behalf. Your help is not taken for granted. Thank you to each one of you for sharing your insights, suggestions and helping me with proof reading. Your input has been very helpful. I appreciate each one of you for your own special gifts and for your friendship.

Very special thanks goes to my husband, Steve, who never fails to cheer me on. For some reason he is convinced I can do anything. He is my knight in shining armor. He has put up with me withdrawing into seclusion to work on my writing and has said good night many a night while I stayed up to work on these stories. He has never failed to encourage me or let me follow my dreams. Thank you Steve.

I also thank WestBow Press for their professionalism, effort and expertise in helping me bring this book to its final product.

Last but not least, I thank God for the dream, the journey and the opportunity to share in this