Thursday, October 20, 2011

Starry-Eyed Surprise

(This post originally appeared on my Fuller blog: .)

Last night back in my Fuller housing complex, it was a pretty chilly night accompanied with a thick fog that rested over Los Angeles.  I was having trouble going to sleep, so I decided to sit down and look up to the sky and check out the stars. There’s only two problems with this.

1.       It’s LA.

2.       It’s a foggy night in LA.

Okay, so it doesn’t look like I’m going to have this romantic night with myself as I star gaze. But, I decided to look up to the sky anyway. I got distracted and started looking the trees above me. They were pretty to look at, but that presented another problem.



Trees stars.



Things are going great so far. But I was reminded of a trip I took a few months ago with some friends from my clinical psychology cohort and an MFT student (also a friend!). One night, we stood at the edge of the Grand Canyon and looked at the sky. I’m telling you, it made me think of God at creation like a little girl in pig tails armed with black construction paper, a glue stick, and a gigantic bag of glitter. God in his capricious creativity threw a bunch of glitter in the sky because God thought it was pretty and liked shiny things. I couldn’t agree more, great Creator of the Universe.



I missed those stars last night. But I knew I’d never see those stars unless I kept looking up. I wouldn’t see them if I stared at the trees. But you wanna know what was the most frustrating part? No matter how hard I squinted, no matter how high I jumped, no matter how badly I wanted to break into the roof access of nearby buildings after midnight, none of that would have helped me see those stars.



Some nights we see the stars. Other nights we don’t.



Some nights we look up and see the stars. Other times we can try as hard as we want to and we still won’t.



But I’m still counting for at least a star or two to break through the sheath of the LA sky. And when those stars are ready to shine again, my eyes will be waiting and I’ll greet them with a short smile. Good to see you again, stars. I knew you’d be back.

No comments:

Post a Comment