If you’ve been watching the news I'm sure you've heard that Nashville had a record breaking amount of rain over the weekend and many areas are flooding.
We talked to Andrew for a few minutes yesterday and I asked him if he had been watching all of the rain and what he thought about it. His response was, “It’s been raining a whole bunch and I can’t go fishing.”
Don’t you wish we could stay that innocent and naïve forever? To have a child’s mentality and resilience that keeps the world’s pain at bay, to experience everything like it was for the very first time…
Since Andrew has been a part of my life he has revived the wonder with which I see the world on a daily basis. There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about something I see, hear, taste, touch, or smell from Andrew’s point of view. I think some of that has to do with him not being here all the time- so I try to remember everything I want to tell or show him for when he’s here. I envy his energy and his thirst for knowledge (something his Dad still has and one of the many reasons I love him). There are so many attributes we lose as we become adults, qualities that get lost in the everyday grind of life, which our children can re-inspire in us if we take the time to appreciate things through their eyes and allow ourselves to absorb their enthusiasm.
Sometimes it’s simply noticing the little things in life that can revive your view of the world. You know the old cliché, “Take some time to stop and smell the roses.” My mom never lost her fascination with nature and the beauties God has given us. I can remember her yelling at my Dad and I to come look at the sunset, or the moon, or this flower, that rainbow, this spider web- and I would yell “Oh Mom!” and roll my eyes, dragging myself half-heartedly away from whatever I was doing to appease her.
I caught myself yelling at Drew Friday night to come look at the clouds over the river at our camp. His eyes met mine with their “You’re crazy look” and I laughed out loud at what my own facial expressions must have looked like to my mom. She always said that one day I would appreciate the everyday splendors in life and while I’m sure I would have still noticed the colors of the clouds at sunset before a storm, I think because of her and Andrew, I realized the significance of sharing them with someone I love. After all was the sky not the very first canvas? And was the first sunset not the first Masterpiece?
Paraphrase: "I think it would tick God off if you walk by the color purple in a field or in the sky somewhere and don't notice it.... People think pleasing God is all God cares about. But any fool living in the world can see He is always trying to please us back." ~Alice Walker, The Color Purple, 1982
Thanks Mama.
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