Family Faith and Fun Fridays: The Search for Wonder

The 4:00 arrival of the lumbering yellow school bus marked not only an end to another school week, but also the beginning of Spring Break. While the sheer thrill of NOT going to school is marvelous in its own right, the excitement around our house isn’t exactly off the charts this year. In fact, I might dare to say that there was a touch of disappointment brewing over breakfast.

“Last year on this day we came home and packed our suitcases,” Hannah remembered aloud.

“Yeah… and I tried on my new swimsuit like a hundred times,” Lizzy recalled with a giggle.

“And Luke started playing his new D.S. game before we even left for the airport!”

“I wish we were going to Florida again this year,” Hannah said with a wistful sigh.

“So do I,” the voice of my own restless spirit echoed. But then I remembered her words, the striking musings of another mother longing for life to the full:

I remember once sitting at the hairdresser’s. The woman beside me reads, and I read her title in the reflection of the mirror: 1000 Places to See Before You Die. Is that it? Are there physical places that simply must be seen before I stop breathing within time, before I inhale eternity?

Why? To say that I’ve had reason to bow low? To say that I’ve seen beauty? To say that I’ve been arrested by wonder?

Isn’t it here? Can’t I find it here?

These very real lungs will breath in more than 11,000 liters of air today, and tonight over our farm will rise the Great Hexagon of the blazing winter stars– Sirius, Riegel, ruby Aldebran, Capella, the fiery Gemini twins, and Procyon, and the the center, scarlet Betelgeuse, the red super giant larger than twice the size of earth’s orbit around the sun– and I will embrace the skin of a boy child that my body grew from a seed. The low heavens outside the paned windows fill with more snowflakes than stars, no two–stacked crystals the same; the trees in the wood draw in collective green breath to the still of January hibernation, and God in the world will birth ice form His womb, frost of heaven, bind the chains of the Pleiades, loose the cords of Orion, and number again the strands on my head.

Isn’t it here? The wonder? Why do I spend so much of my living hours struggling to see it? Do we truly stumble so blind that we must be affronted with blinding magnificence of our blurry soul–sight to recognize grandeur? The very same surging magnificence that cascades over our every day here. Who has time or eyes to notice.

The only place we need to see before we die is this place of seeing God, here and now. (Anne Voskamp, 1000 Gifts).

This mother’s quest for abundant life has moved me. My own appetite for wonder has been sparked by her relentless search for beauty. If she can find it amidst farm chores and dinner preparations, six children and endless piles of laundry, then surely I can find it, too.

Desperate to see, I’d dropped her beautiful book to the ground and bent my knees. “Please, show me the wonder, Please help me to enjoy life right here.” I have been praying for eyes to see it- the beauty in my now; the wonder in my ordinary, the joy in my jumbled world of carpet stains and chipping paint, crying children and piling laundry.

And so today, as my children talked of beach combing and ocean sunsets, of swimming pools and hot Florida sun, I wondered aloud for them to hear.

“Do you think that we could find something just as wonderful here?”

Blue eyes turned to look at the one who had voiced such a crazy supposition.

“Well, maybe if we had a beach.”

“Or 80 degree sunshine.”

“Or a major league baseball team.”

“Or just the right mindset?” I asked.

“More like the right kind of heart,” my perceptive daughter corrected.

Yes, the right kind of heart. Hearts with open eyes.

It won’t happen overnight or in the course of one short week, but I’d like to begin. I’d like to live invitationally, beckoning my five stay-at-home-vacationers to spot the wonder right here. So today, I hid 500 bright shiny copper pennies all around our home. And as we gather for our first “vacation breakfast” tomorrow morning, I will issue this challenge: “Let’s spend the next ten days looking for all the little gifts of wonder that God has strewn through our ordinary life. Let’s look and savor and thank Him. I will invite the kids to pick up the pennies that they find in our home and allow each copper sparkle to prompt this simple prayer, “Open the eyes of my heart, Lord. I want to see you today.”

We’ll drop all of those found coins into the penny jar that sits on our kitchen counter. And then, each night as we sit down together for dinner, we’ll recount some of the “small moments of wonder” that have filled our stay-at-home spring break… the shafts of sunlight dancing across our carpet, the healthy legs that pumped bike pedals, the laughter that laced our play.

This year, we may not have souvenirs to place gingerly on a shelf when our spring break is done, but I’m praying that we will possess a new appreciation for the countless gifts of grace that have been here all along!

How about you? Are you ready for a fresh infusion of wonder? Do you need a few sparkling reminders to seek our extraordinary God in the midst of your ordinary day? Why not lace your house with pennies and invite your children to join you in a hunt for small but sparkling treasure. As you do, remind them that wonder need not be over the ocean or high on a mountaintop. Wonder can be found wherever Jesus is!

The Overflow: “Open the eyes of my heart so I may see…”
-Ephesians 1:18

Family Faith and Fun Fridays: The Search for Wonder

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Are you longing to spend time with God but life keeps getting in the way?

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