Butterfly Nightlight

Cramped in a tiny chair, feeling like a worn out Mommy doll in a hand-me-down dollhouse, I allowed pure peace to absorb in the air that evening. Curious rays of sunshine were dripping all over the carpet, like they wanted to play with all the cluttered toys on the ground. Ainsley was thoughtfully coloring a cupcake toy in rosy pink marker, and Savannah was trying to copy her big sister but mainly getting the green all over her white shirt. But I let it happen. I felt God's presence in that room, in those girls' chubby cheeks and dimpled smiles. Babysitting is so much more of a blessing than I often think it is (if you have the right kiddos of course :)  I understand I'm far off from being a mother, but I'm learning what patience is, especially in the urge to take over. (Here let me help you with your jammies...no by self! *10 hours later* Here, your shirt doesn't go on your legs...there you go!) But besides all that, I thank Jesus for the blessing of joyful little girls who play with my hair and smile at little things and say they love me. 

I remember one particular babysitting night. Feeling empty and beat up inside, I was tucking a sweet, My Little Pony fanatic into her bed. We said goodnight and turned on her butterfly nightlight. I asked her if she wanted to keep the lights on anyway, and she gives me an answer that blew my mind at that moment and caused me to question what I was doing, going through life trying to figure everything out. 

"Off. I'm sometimes scared of the dark, but I trusted in God. If you trust in God, you can never be scared," she says.

"That's right Sierra. Good for you to trust in God and never be scared!"

"Yeah! Like in Veggie Tales if you're ever scared of the dark, trust in God!" (good ol' Larry and Bob, at it again)

"That's right! God will always take care of us won't he?"

"Yeah!"

"Goodnight Twilight Sparkle," (my lil pony code names right there)

"Night Rainbow Dash!"

Sierra was four when this happened. I quietly tip toed downstairs, took a nice handful of chocolate Teddy Grahams (my fav) to the couch, and thought. Ok, I'm pretty sure God just spoke to me through a four year old girl. If you trust in God, you can never be scared. It's funny, because I find myself constantly afraid of the dark. The unknown. The cliff that dwells right outside my comfort zone cave. (read Megan's blog post about that, it accurately sums it up :) My sparkly, Rainbow Dash wings don't know how to fly into something so dark. Sometimes I don't think they know how to fly at all.

Then I remember something. In my own room, even if it's pitch black, I know the general direction of where my nightlight is. I could search for minutes on end, hand desperately roaming the splotches on the wall that remind me of a thousand little monsters, when I feel the light-switch. And bam. Light drenches the parched darkness. Usually in those instances, I need the light so I can find my water cup or go pee. But I think it's the same in real life. No matter how far we are in the darkness of anxiety, we know the general direction of hope. And that is up to heaven. When we have enough of an urge for light, we can crack open a Bible, and light will radiate from the hope we find. Like each of the teeny letters in the big Book of Books has it's own colorful beam that activates when it's read, and at the end of the page the words light up in your heart like the northern lights.

After four years babysitting for practically every house on my street, I've learned to love all kinds of kids and still find wonder in each of their distinct personalities. I'm seeing these lovelies grow up every day and it reminds me that my life isn't the center of the universe. I have about a million stories to tell, and I've messed up more times that I can count on fingers and toes (like...um...painting nails and spilling a whole bottle of bright red nail polish on the carpet). But I have lots of stories that make me happy inside. Whenever I'm sad, I just think of two year old Travis running around the kitchen pretending he's Todd Helton, screaming WE GET TACOS! over and over.

As much as I like telling myself that the best part of babysitting is sitting on the couch eating other people's food, the actual best part is the genuine joy of little kids. It's really nice to have a taste of being a mom for about four hours, then going back home and being thankful that's not me yet. Moms are so much more brave and superhuman than most people understand. Thank you Mama for letting my imagination run wild and loving me. Thank you Grandma and Juju for spoiling me and loving me. Thank you to my aunts for being super amazing and loving me. Thank you to all the inspiring women I know, the ones I babysit for and all the ones everywhere, for believing in me and loving me.

I hope tonight, wherever you are, that the little monsters on your bedroom wall will guide you to the light. Or maybe you'll guide yourself to the light and be amazed by the aurora in your own room. That you'll turn on the nightlight inside of you and society will exhale a breath of gratification. We can be sure that this darkness is temporary, that the light will blind us soon enough if we continue to search.

The things I go through...

 But it's so worth it :)

Splashing in the Stars

The grass was crunchy. It reminded her of a bunch of old grandpas, all cracking their backs in unison with every step she took. They looked like grandpa grasses too. Brown, withered, and seemed to know something you didn't. They were grasses that scolded you for not wearing shoes and snickered at you when you stepped on a pebble. As she walked the three miles to the schoolhouse, she found herself talking to the grasses and telling them all the things she couldn't tell her friends. Or her mama. Only the grasses and God could know. And she liked it that way.
School was already out for the summer, even though it was May. All the other kids helped their families on the farm, but she came to the schoolhouse instead. Sometimes she sat on the steps and watched the grandpas get tickled by the wind. Sometimes the door was mysteriously unlocked, and she went inside and bathed herself in words and numbers and questions. They were saturated in the air, all these words. Words that came together in a million different ways and bounced off the roof and into her mind, making her imagination chug like a train down a track around the world. She had never left her little home town of Hemingford, Nebraska, but she didn't need to. Words took her to every galaxy she wanted to go.

Sometimes, I just sit and wonder. Usually looking out of a car window, or right before I go to bed, or at random moments throughout my day when I think I can dazzle up the situations around me, add some embellishments to the truth that cuts me to the core sometimes.

When we take the five hour road trip to visit grandma and papa in Chadron, Nebraska, we drive past vacant fields of corn, wheat, and plain old prairie. These are forgiving fields; they let you cry at them and yell at them and laugh at them and sigh at them. They just keep on waving at you, untroubled and nonchalant, whispering the question of why you're so uptight in this blissful world we live. Even though I have sparkling dreams of living in a big city someday, there's something so consoling about being in an open prairie with potbelly clouds wafting in the infinite sky above. I think we all have an exploited, materialistic disease that only the prairie can cure.

Along this relinquishing drive, we go past an old, abandoned schoolhouse that sits content in the middle of nowhere. Last time when we were driving home over Thanksgiving, I begged my dad to let us stop. For all the many many trips we've taken to Chadron, I've see this schoolhouse and my imagination always goes full speed in my mind, thinking of the kinds of people who might've been in that house and what they would've said, done, and even worn. Back when I was seven I came up with names for the people and imagined detailed aspects of their daily lives (Callie wore a blue dress and rode a white horse named Magical and she lived next to a boy named Joseph who had a crush on her :)

When we stopped in the house for the very first time, I was expecting to see what I had imagined over all the years. But it wasn't quite the same (shocker!) I carefully climbed the steps (that were literally about to collapse) and braced myself for, well, I don't know. I stepped in and spotted an old decaying piano in the far corner, a bright blue chipping roof, and benches lined up facing what looked like a stage. Huh. It was beautiful in a grotesque kind of way.

As it turns out, I did a little research because I'm oh-so fascinated with this little schoolhouse looking building. Well, I guess you could call it research, but it's more like looking up what few pictures of it are out there and reading what the photographers had to say about it. One random guy who lives near it claims it to be an old German dance hall. Since absolutely everything in the internet is 100% true all the time, I believed it. It made sense, a German dance hall in the middle of nowhere! It's actually pretty cool to think about. Now my imagination train can get a whole different track and chug from a new station.

Sometimes, I think we need to let our minds do some imagining. Just like we need to take a break from work every few hours, our minds need to breathe sometimes. Whether it be memories that swim around in our minds (squirting our hearts while they do it) or completely dreaming up new scenarios, our minds thirst for an opportunity to dance in the buzzing monotony of our cell phone screens. And when we let our minds quietly spin around the galaxies, God takes that opportunity to imagine right along with us. He picks us up and does the waltz with us through the stars. We fearlessly plunge into the Milky Way, splashing stars around like a puddle. God wants to imagine with us. He wants us to take the time to be free and let our unique dreams surface in the muddy waters of the world. Our thoughts are beautiful to Him. Priceless. Worth dying for. We don't even understand the potential of them, and the love and interest God takes in them. We must dream and let God's love stir our imaginations.

All the Simbas

Yesterday, I tried something totally and completely crazy. I went to school with ashes on my forehead. Yep, confused looks definitely floated my way, and some of my friends were genuinely concerned that I had a black smudge on my forehead. Oh my gosh, I thought you didn't know! I was like, that would've been so embarrassing! Thanks guys. As the day went along, I got less conscious and it was kind of fun to tell people why I had my ashes. The majority of people knew what Ash Wednesday was, but there were some people who didn't, so I had to explain that it's a church thing, which transformed into an even more confused look. What I really wanted to do to those people was put my hands on their shoulders and look them straight in the eye, completely serious, and say, "Remember you are from ashes and to ashes you shall return." But I tried my best to explain, hoping that maybe they'd give up and just Google 'Ash Wednesday.' Hopefully people were inspired by me though, and maybe even say I'm a bit insane, which is okay too.

The best comment of all was from my lovely friend Tanner. She said, "I saw you, and I have to be completely honest, the first thing I thought was...SIMBA." So of course I broke out singing It's the circle of liiiife!! as my friend Josh attempted to pick me up, like I was Simba. Technically, I was Simba for the day. (From the Lion King if you don't know what I'm talking about, just in case :)

The Simba thing got me thinking though. On Ash Wednesday, all the Catholics around the world are a bunch of Simbas walking around. We're Simbas on the streets, at school, at work, at Target. And we're all singing the same song: "Oh I just can't wait to be [with the] King!!!" No, we really can't wait. All of our giving up, meatless meals, praying, and everything else we do during Lent are so that we can endure the wait by personally drawing ourselves closer to the King. Then at the end, the King comes at Easter, and the Simbas rejoice like never before. Jesus came alive again. He doesn't love the Simbas because they're good and always follow the fasting rules, He loves the Simbas because they are His image. His version of beautiful. And that takes my breath away. That's what makes Lent a lovely time, not because of following rules of religion but because I carry with me the knowledge of a God who has conquered the world.

Maybe next year I'll wear ashes to school again. Who knows, maybe someone I talked to will welcome Jesus into their heart because of my insanity. This Lent, I'm letting God take my breath away. And He's already begun.

Ash Wednesday morning snow! (that promptly melted)