Here is a small thing that I found in my garden today.  

It doesn’t belong there.  It’s just a weed, winding its way into my garden from the ever-moving, encroaching woods.  There are a million of these things out there.  I rip them out without thinking of anything but the tomatoes I planted, that are ripening somewhere in the forest of weeds.   

“Stop!” one of my kids yelled in dismay.   He had come to keep me company.  “Don’t pull the Elephants!”

“What? What elephants?”  

“Mom! That thing in your hand!  You’re ripping out the beautiful Elephants!”

I stopped and took a closer look.  

“See Mom?  Two big ears, and a trunk?  These are baby elephants!  Don’t pull them out, they’re my favorite.” 

He ran off to play, and I was left, standing in the weeds, thinking. 

Admiring the elephants.

Why hadn’t I seen these before?  How could I miss these magnificent elephants, living right in my front garden?   

Each flower is only about a centimeter across.  They grow on thin vines, tangling all through my garden.  I just dismissed them as weeds, never taking time to look more closely.  But now, I was seeing things through my child’s eyes.  He sees the world differently, more clearly.  His sight is not clouded by experience and utilitarianism.  

He sees only wonder and magnificence.

It’s right here, all around us.  Wonder and Magnificence.  The God who created you and me is an artist who cares, right down to the intricate details.  This tiny, unnoticed elephant flower living in obscurity in my garden is living proof of the Creator’s love and care for us.   Wow.  Kids see things so clearly.  Life is so rich and beautiful when I have someone to help me see it.

I’m going to check for elephants in my living room now…

I found these Acorns lying on the ground today.  There were so many of them!  They had fallen from a great height, a Giantess of a tree, really.  The tree has some broken limbs from last night's storm, but she is stronger than she looks.  The cracks and broken parts will heal.  Trees have a way of doing that.  She will survive, probably another sixty years or more.  Even if she doesn't know it, she is stronger than this recent storm.  

But some of her acorns had fallen in the wind.  Some were cracked and broken, some were too small.  All they had needed was a little more time with their Mama Tree.  Just a few more weeks, really.  Just time, nothing more.

If they had been given a few more weeks, then Earth would do the rest.  

Like for this other Little Guy in my yard...  He was given enough time on the Tree.  He fell into my flower garden a few years ago, brown and plump, and Life Happened.  

He got dirty and muddy.  He got cracked and broken up.  It rained on him a lot.  Sheesh.  He had a rough time for a while, just like the rest of us.  But then, in all the pain and trouble, after he thought he was dead and buried, really done for, this began to happen:

And then, this.  This is his future!

Every rainstorm makes that Tree stronger.   Amazing, isn't it?  All that power, all that beauty, all that potential, hidden away inside a tiny little Acorn...

All they need is a few short months with a Mama Tree...

And God will do the rest.  Mightiness unleashed!

Sometimes when I look at my grown children, it’s as if a shooting star crosses the sky, and I catch a one-second glimpse of them when they were eight years old. Or three  or five years old…  

A flashback to childhood…

One burst of light, and then it’s gone.  

There are moments that I suck in my breath as my grown child is talking, telling me about work and college.  And suddenly, I see her as she was:  Freckles, missing and crooked teeth, three and a half feet tall, telling me about science and how she is going to be an archaeologist when she grows up.  Or in a shimmer, I see my little author child, pen in hand, holding up her latest story.  Her braids fly wildly askew under her straw hat, which she wears to help her get in character to write.  Her freckles are drawn on with brown crayola marker to look more like Tom Sawyer.  “It’s all about a girl who wants a dog, Mom.  And she finally gets one!  That’s the happy surprise ending, see my illustration?  She gets a dog!”  Or, as my now-teenager asks for the car keys, and reaches out her hand, I see the chubby little fingers of her at two years old, holding my hand just because I was the powerful one who kept away the monsters in the dark.  She’d grip my fingers in hers, and hold on tightly until she was sound asleep.  Ah, the days when I could fix everything that was important to them.  

Those days didn’t last.

And at these lucid moments, when I again see a mirage of my small children, my heart beats on my chest wall with a pang of longing, and tears spring to my eyes.   I smile and reach out, but they are transformed.  They are grown.  

It was just a shooting star.  A glimmer of what used to be.

Suddenly, I am old, and they are taller than I am.  “You okay, Mom?” they look at me quizzically.  “What are you smiling about?”  Snap.  They are adults, and they take the vision of my tiny child with them when they walk away, unknowing.  “Are you smiling and crying at the same time, Mom? Are you?”

Of course I am.  

This week, the Perseid Meteor Shower hit around here.  Carpe diem, I say.  This is one of those moments!   We all stayed up until it was extremely late, and extremely dark.  Then my youngest kids and I camped out, wrapped in quilts under the dark sky, and counted real-life shooting stars.  

“One!”  
“Oh Mom!  Did you see that?  I saw one! I saw one! I saw a shooting star!”
“Don’t kick me.”
“Watch out!  You’re crowding me!  I don’t want to fall off the roof of the truck.”
“Can I have some of your blanket, please?”

“Two!”

“I saw it! I saw it! I saw it!!!”
“I lost my shoes, Mom”
“Pass the binoculars.”
“Did you know that stars are made up of burning gas?”
“Mom, what’s a star made of?”
“Well, she’s right.  But quit worrying about burning gas!  You’re not a star.”
“Foot out of my hair, please.”

“Three!”  
“Wow!  That one was huge!”
Small One nestled in my elbow, on the hood of the truck.  She lisps through the new hole in her teeth, where a baby tooth fell out earlier.  “I’m tho glad you got me up the thee thith, Mom.  Thankth.”  

“Four.”
We whispered now, partly because some kids had fallen asleep.  And partly because we were deep in Awe.

“Five.”
We felt the dark silence of the universe surrounding us.  Alive, burning, sparkling.  

“Six.”
We were small. 

“Seven.”
Silence.

We stayed out there until the wee hours, counting shooting stars.  It was priceless.
This is one of those moments in life that will keep coming back to me.  

Watching the sudden, silent bursts of light in the darkness with my kids…finding the joy in the stillness of the night.

As I carried the small ones back inside to their beds, I promised myself that in the rush and bustle of life, I will never be too busy to hug someone under the stars.

Because shooting stars don’t last forever.

Carpe diem.