Tag Archives: wonder

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I call him Bud. He calls me Chayda. We get along for the most part, and it’s a good thing we do because we spend a lot of time together. We’re friends, but we’re not alike. He’s a boy; I’m a girl. He’s short; I’m tall. He’s blond; I’m brunette. His eyes are blue; mine are green. He’s a baby; I’m supposed to be grown up.

He’s lived twenty three months. I’ve lived twenty three years. There is so much I could teach him, so many things he needs to learn. But while I am showing him new things and unveiling the world to him, he is simply reminding me of things I knew once but have forgotten.

“Hold hands,” he says, and puts his chubby fist in mine. And suddenly instead of me simply following him around the yard, we are walking together, and sometimes I am leading him, but usually he is leading me.

I come to his house to take care of him, to play with him, to teach him. But while I am teaching him, he is also teaching me. And it is the differences between us that teach me the most. . . ...continue reading →

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Most people don’t get to live extraordinary lives, at least not the way we tend to think of extraordinary. We look at our jobs and our homes and our friends, and it is all so ordinary. There’s nothing that sets us apart from anyone else, not like those missionaries in Africa witnessing to unreached tribes or that neighbor down the street who always seems to have the best the world can offer. The divide between us and them looks insurmountable sometimes, and perhaps it is.

But the gap between ordinary and extraordinary, on the other hand. . . that’s actually very small, small enough to be bridged by one little word.

Wonder.

Yes, wonder. Remember when you were an Indian on the warpath and the white men you captured wouldn’t cooperate as real captives should? Remember all those tea parties with little princess friends and sometimes even the queen of England? Remember turning stumps to bears and embroidery frames to halos? We all knew what it was to wonder once. The world was real, and it was alive, and we played a very big part in what that world became. But the older we get, the harder it is to hold onto that sense of wonder we had as children. So often, “real” life gets in the way. We can’t just imagine anymore. We have work to do, school to attend, families to feed.

We’re too busy to wonder. It doesn’t happen naturally anymore, not like when we were young. So make wonder a choice. ...continue reading →