Every night, I pray with Aurelia. Sometimes it feels special and even sacred. Mostly it feels like routine, and occasionally just meaningless words.
Lately, she’s been talking and communicating and understanding more than I could have imagines for someone who is not even 2 yet.
The past week or so, when we pray she asks a question, and innocent question that stops me in my tracks and pulls me out of the mundane into something more.
“Where’s Jesus?”
“….He’s here, baby. In our hearts.”
“I don’t see him.”
I swallow, choking on some invisible fear, a memory, a doubt.
“He’s here, baby. Whenever we feel love, or happy or full of joy, that’s Jesus. Whenever we see anything good and beautiful.”
I struggle to form the words.
I’ve never had a problem believing God is real.
I don’t remember a moment in my life ever doubting his existence.
I’ve always made my home in ethereal places that don’t count on the tangible and logical to exist.
I don’t have a problem believing what I cannot see.
I don’t even necessarily struggle with the fact that He loves us.
I know he’s a good father.
It’s how good, how joyful, the “bigness” of His grace and love I think I know deep down, yet somehow I don’t apply to every day moments when I need it the most.
“I don’t see him…”
When my prayers feel like they are hitting the ceiling, when my feelings seems too loud, to real to make sense of the Truth.
When I just want my way, my timing.
When I let those old voices in.
When I believe fear instead of love.
When it feels too hard for too long.
When I am about to give up on my dreams.
When I am tired from struggling to believe how good.
How big.
I pause.
Last night I had a vivid dream.
I was hiking in a dense, dark jungle with my husband. We were trying to get somewhere important, somewhere where people were expecting us.
Somewhere we were meant to be.
To get to this place, we needed to cross this terrifying chasm on a swaying, frayed rope bridge. My heart in my chest, I followed my husband across. It was so high up I couldn’t see the ground. I panicked, half-way across.
I can’t do it. It’s too hard. It’s not worth it…
I don’t see him.
Somehow I kept going.
Somehow we made it across.
On the other side was our destination. A beautiful hotel, more majestic than anything I had ever seen. When we walked inside, we found out that someone had anonymously paid for us to stay there. We walked into the beautifully decorated, enormous suite and looked around laughing with pure joy.
It was a gift. We could rest.
I woke up with a jolt.
It’s a risk, stepping out. But there is an enormous blessing waiting on the other side.
I don’t have trouble seeing Him in the small things, in my daughter’s eyes and in the little ways he provides our daily needs.
Sometimes it’s the big-ness I struggle with.
“He’s here baby. Everywhere. He never leaves us.”
She looks at me, innocent and whole, with more wisdom in her little-enourmous heart than I can understand, and says,
“He’s in the stars.”
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