The Wonders Outside the Window

Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

One early evening, years ago, I sat at home, working at my desk in my makeshift office. Outside my window the sun lit up the yard’s maple and elm trees and made the lawn a luminous green.

But none of that pried my eyes off the project on my desk.

What did it was my then-five-year-old daughter, Bekah. She stood on the grass with thin arms stretched toward the sun, her eyes squinting, her chestnut hair shimmering. Then she ran and skipped and twirled around the yard, laughing with abandon. I could barely hear her through the window, but I could see her clearly. I became a witness to her sheer delight in living, her immersion in the glories of the moment.

Bekah had no idea I was watching—and taking notes. “Seeing Bekah awakened in me,” I soon wrote in my journal, “a moment of admiration and longing.” I admired her exuberance. I thought I could trade in—for a little while, at least—my businesslike ways for a bit of childlike wonder. The daughter I was trying so hard to raise, a kindergartner who could barely read, was teaching me.

I returned to the project on my desk—I was, after all, up against a deadline for the publisher I was working for at the time.

But I have stored that glimpse of Bekah in my mind. And I still come back to it, still replay it. For I see in her childlike play possibilities for how to live. In the thick (and thin) of my everyday circumstances I want to stay awake to life’s incandescent marvels. I need better to notice—really notice—the faces of people around me. And I grow more eager to run after my soul’s desire for God. I want what I saw in Bekah to stay with me.

Sometimes I think gazing out a window—without hurry, with patience—can be a spiritual discipline. So today I think, If a glimpse of Bekah skipping around the yard can teach me, what other prospects might await, hidden in plain sight?

 —adapted from my book, Awake My Soul, published by Doubleday.