Frustrated with the "Normal Guilt"

I happened upon this blog when I was preparing to write my other blog about normal.

She tell the tale of how she and her husband didn't want to live the "normal Christian life" when they were first married, but how marriage, children, and a mortgage changed those aspirations. She continues to say that they soon realized the idol of complacency and comfort in their hearts and decided to change the trajectory of their lives. They sold their home and got involved in full time ministry.

I only skimmed through her writing, but I found the conclusion of her post and one of the comments she received intriguing.

Her conclusion (Underlines added are mine):
They [friends] are displaying the gospel, and there is nothing normal about their lives. And every time I get off the phone with her, all I want is to have nothing normal about our lives. She still bleeds God, and her life is being poured out on the neediest and the most broken. She traded entitlement for surrender, and God took her up on it.
What if heaven and God and forever became our normal?
Wouldn’t that change everything?

One of three comments the post received:
Normal.  Right.  Sometimes I would love to be normal.  Instead, I am a 59-year-old-maid who set aside career plans to care for my mother in her declining years until she passed.  Yes, I have a family, I'm guardian for a disabled brother and uncle.  Yes, I have a house...all 700 square feet of it...in need of new wiring, plumbing and a roof...and no way to pay for them.  Yes, I have a job...actually three of them, but none provide health insurance, and the combined income still leaves me well below the poverty level. Sorry to whine, but when it takes everything to just get by, "doing great things for God" just sort of flies out the window.

My heart grieves for this lady! Her "great thing" seems to have been right under her nose the whole time, but she has chosen bitterness instead.

My response to the comment:
I would like to say that whatever you are doing, when done with the right heart and attitude, can be the "great thing" God Himself has given you to do. (Ephesians 2:10 -- The works that He has prepared for you to walk in.) I struggle to answer how "normal life" can be a great thing for God, but it's not the doing that He cares about, but the relationship of love. It sounds like the Lord has given you "great things" to do in caring for your mother, brother, and uncle while working three jobs (dying to self). I hope that your heart will be comforted and the Lord will show you how He has allowed these things for His glory and your sanctification in Him.

 I was particularly moved because this is my struggle. I have two fears in life:
1) I don't want to be alone for ever. (Without my sisters in particular.)
2) I don't want to live a complacent, comfortable, un-sacrificed life. (I don't want to be "normal".)

I desire to be known for accomplishing a great task (for the Lord). I want to be one who has taken risks and started things. I want to stand up for the rights of the poor and feeble.

As displayed in this woman's blog and the reader's response, we have wrongly connected "not normal" and "heavenly focus." Our eyes are supposed to be fixed on Jesus, not the way to be the most radical. We've then said that service in the slums and/or foreign countries are the best ways to not be normal.

We as a culture, and I know that I in my own heart, need to assess and re-define "normal", "radical", "heavenly focus", and our calling in Jesus.

(Here's the quick answer:
Whatever we have to do -- do it as to Jesus!)