apples and stars

Saturday was a day that all day long kept me keenly aware of our new lifestyle. We were outside in the morning, picking apples and playing in the rock box. Then I spent a good chunk of time out in the heat, scrubbing chicken poo off of our driveway. If you know anything of chicken poo, you know the stuff is cement. And our driveway was becoming an embarrassment because our chickens hang out under our cars, causing a lot of mess. So I spent the early afternoon hosing down our driveway and using a scrub brush on my hands and knees to clean it all off. It was gross.

But that night Rory started to make an apple pie with the apples from our tree. It was close to ten by the time the pie was done, so we took it outside and ate it on our camping chairs on our fantastically clean driveway. It was windy and there were no bugs.

We sat there for a long, long time looking up at the stars. We saw six satellites and three shooting stars. And we talked about how crazy it is that we don't look at the stars more often. I noted how I've watched more Dancing with the Stars in the past year than I have the actual stars in the sky. But star gazing leads to good, deep conversation. I think that was God's intent. Looking up at night leads you to the big questions, the greatness of God, brings you to a place of awe and wonder and gently puts you back in your little mortal place. We covered a lot of ground while we slouched in our chairs: space stations and moon patterns, life on other planets, gps systems, and parenting.

So here's an idea for one of these last evenings of summer: get outside and look up. And if you can bring a warm piece of apple pie with you, even better. And if you happen to have a patch of yard that isn't covered in chicken poo, better still.