A Shower of Stars, Longing, Love and Life

✨It’s so easy to thing we have forever, or a long time at least.  Days stretch out in such a way that we are lulled into different paces and places than we’re maybe meant for.  

We slow down when we’re meant to speed up- working towards collective, shared dreams.  We speed up and rush through some of the good stuff, the quiet moments, the smaller tasks.  The mixing of batter, the washing of heads, the taking of breaths.  

We will miss certain things more when they’re gone than while they were present- because we traded them for worry in that exact moment that we lived them.  

We often do trade important for pertinent, simply because one is more selfish and rude, though not always honest or true.  
We rush through lazy afternoons and languish through our work day tasks.   
Oh how backwards we have it sometimes.  Or maybe that’s just me.  

We do this without really even trying, so don’t feel bad about yourself. I tell myself this, too. 
I think that’s the whole point.  Things lie about their brevity and their importance and we just tend to follow suit, because they’re such good actors.  (And they make such good actors out of us.)

If only we can really see it. 

How lovely it is as it really is.  Our family.  Our friendships.  This moment.  The sunset.  The star showers, the star stories, the life stories. 

I lingered outside last night under those great big beautiful stars. The ones that only look so small from where I am. I stayed outside, in the middle of the summer star shower, longer than my kids. They headed back inside before i dud,  as I stood there craned my neck backwards, trying to find just *one more shooting star*.  Two, if I’m being honest.   But I couldn’t.  
I might have been being greedy- for I’d already gotten that “one more” when I asked and they were right there.  Bright and streaming with a green tail.  Not to mention the one we all witnessed, that was so dazzling and bright, seconds long, and perhaps the best one I’d ever seen.  

Star watching on a clear calm night has always been a favorite thing of mine, even though I don’t “get” to do it much now.  I used to lay there hours out on the dock, by the lake when I was in my late teens and early twenties, before life took shape.  looking for those shooting stars.  
Things are different now, and I certainly don’t do it as much, and not there anymore, not that dock at least.  But I remembered what it was like last night, and I wanted to keep right on looking. Even though it wasn’t by a lake, and life looked so different, I remembered to joy of that quest.  

Until I lingered long enough that my daughter stepped outside and walked over to find me.  A stream of her blonde hair trailing behind her, I could see it even in the dark.  I could find her and her beautiful smile as she sought me. 
I kid you not, at that exact moment another small shooting star streamed overhead, its own blonde tail right behind it, and just over her head.  
Two shooting stars.  There they were. 
Two  bright, beautiful shooting stars.  
I got what I hoped for, and more. 
Plus her brother inside, and my husband.  Everything and more, than I could have wished for or hoped for as I lay on that teenage dock of dreams.  

I picked her up in my arms and we walked  back inside together.  

I don’t have to go looking for shooting stars anymore.  Not for hours, at least, and not like that.  I may still stop to look and linger at times.  But those hours spent before are now spent in better ways.  
Those big, bright beautiful, beating-heart stars are right here.  Yes, they’re right here.  

Under the roof of our humble home, our blessed lives, and we’re all much bigger than we know.  Bigger than we appear sometimes, too. 
Especially from far away. So I come close, I step inside, under the miracle of the showers of shooting stars happening right under my roof.   

I breathe it in. We are all, home, here, together.

This truth fills me with a warm glowing ember of  this ‘present’.  

In my thoughts, as well as my heart. There is also a knowing even, that we might be able to find more adventures together, maybe even some shooting stars, too.  Together, in the future. 

That bright, beautiful future-  that’s streaming past our eyes, a shower of stars from Heaven above.  ❤️