Wonder

Thinking back to Christmas vacation, I'm reminded of a moment we shared with our little family. You see, we live in an area that drowns out the stars with a ton of light pollution and trees, so seeing about 15 stars in the sky on any clear night can be a total treat. The big constellations show up, but that's about it. Lilly has an amazing little telescope that will get ya to the craters on the moon when we can see it, and it's remarkable. We watched the eclipse of the moon a few weeks ago with it - late at night, in the middle of the road, ushering cars to drive around us because we didn't want to lose our coordinates. Yay, Wares.

We love the skies, y'all. There's something that makes you feel tiny when you look out and see a spec of the universe in a splendor that just can't be touched. We've always appreciated it, thanks to my mama pointing it out. I remember even on our honeymoon sitting at a quaint little dining area at the end of a long pier over the water. We were in Jamaica in January - it was chilly, but nice. We could see stars from horizon to horizon with very little interference, and it was breathtaking. I won't ever forget it. So any chance I get to show something remotely like this to the kids, we stop.

So yes, Christmas vacation - we were driving back to South Lake Tahoe from Yosemite with the kids. We made it a day trip, so we'd been driving for a long time, and it was late at night. There was no moon visible, and the skies were as clear as could be. I knew this forecast ahead of time, so I had mentioned earlier that if we had a chance to pull over on the drive home, I'd like to show the kids the stars. And at this point in the evening, I really had forgotten the mention, but Zac didn't.

After driving all day, he had been looking for a place to pull over, and despite how weary I'm sure he was from being a super awesome road warrior, he found a spot at the top of a mountain and drove the car to the edge of the "scenic view" area. It was, just as I had hoped, a super clear night, so the kids were in for a treat. They tumbled out into the cold, everyone wrapped in blankets and jackets, and looked up. I don't know if I've ever seen a clearer shot of the Milky Way than on this night, but there it was - and it was right smack dab in the middle of the sky. Flat, straight up giant. And the kids were in awe, as they should be. And you know what, to top it off, at the very moment we found it, a shooting star grazed right down the middle. It was pretty surreal. And my family, crazy as we are - started freaking out in the best way possible. And it was worth the stop. We still talk about it. Thanks, Z. It's those little things that make me love ya.

But back to where we were, in awe of the beauty of God's creation. Now, of course, shooting stars as we've come to know them are certainly not sweet little twinkly stars trailing a lantern across the sky - scientifically they're basically meteorites or whatever bursting through the atmosphere in a fiery rage, and the stars - some are planets, some are satellites, and some are even long burnt out. And some are our favorite from when Joe was little, "A blinking planet!" Oh that was an epic discovery by the middlest. But all of this reality - It's kindof a buzzkill if you ask me. I prefer the ignorance is bliss approach to life. I'd totally prefer to envision the airplane as the blinking planet. It probably makes for a better story in a child's imagination.

There is something to be said of the, um, I don't know...wonder.

No, I'm not pushing out reality and science, I consider myself pretty educated and realistic. I just choose not to be sometimes, which is totally ok by my standards. But I am not choosing to be uneducated or force out reality - I'm just taking an artistic, road less traveled approach to this. I am basking in the beauty of what is created before us. What HE has created. And I fall in love with it over and over again.

I think The Creation is amazing. I think science is amazing. And the interweaving of what you see because of its divine entanglement humbles me to the core. So, on Valentine's Day, let's take a moment to show our love to Him by serving, helping, loving one another and noticing some small something that brings back the wonder of the stars from when we were still very, very small.

.