(Written in 2008)
My almost-two-year-old son has started talking—quite fervently—to the moon.
Every night he insists on searching out the moon in the sky, and every night he expresses the same surprising litany: “Hello moon! I’m comin’! I get you! I hold you! I love you! I’m comin’!” Then he proceeds to reach with all his little might into the night sky as he continues to call out to the moon.
I marvel at Liam all the time, but this new ritual has been striking me to the core—touching something even deeper than my mama-love for my boy. Because I think I’m seeing something fresh from heaven, something more of God than of the world.
Liam, in all his two years of wisdom, does not know that the only people who talk to the moon are either crazy or staring in “The Wonder Pets” on Nickelodeon. He doesn’t realize the impossibility of his promise to hold the moon in his tiny hands. He’s never seen his parents or loved ones communicate with nature like he’s doing now. And yet every night he’s driven by something inside him to grasp the beauty before his eyes; this something comes out of the way God knit him together and not from any worldly influence.
So once again, I’m learning from my young son. His untainted enthusiasm for God’s creation inspires me to shed the apathy stemming from my busyness that I let consume me on a daily basis.
When was the last time I showed child-like delight over something beautiful or held my arms up to the sky in longing and awe?
Emerson wrote, “The sun illuminates only the eye of the man, but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.” Just like Liam is still just as fascinated with the wrapping paper as he is with the gift, I want to let myself get indiscriminately excited every day. I want to feel awe at the sunrise in the morning, seeing beyond the sun’s ability to light my path and letting its beams into my heart to warm my spirit.
I want to see the star-filled sky, throw my arms into the air and yell, “Hello moon!”
