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