Shooting Stars

This blog post comes at the end of a perfect day. I usually go to yard sales a.k.a. junkin’ as my Granddaughter calls it, but not today. I decided to stay home and work around my house instead. So much was accomplished…the piles of things that had accumulated over the last week from estate clean outs and purchasing trips was put away, housework was done, organizing in my home office was marked off the list and I was ready to retire for the night. Then I remembered that I had read there was a meteor shower, more visible after midnight, and I quickly looked at my watch and decided to head outdoors. The air was really cool for this time of year, unseasonably so. I had a glass of strawberry zinfandel and my lawn chair as silent companions, and I waited, peering up at the night sky. Perseid comes through each August. It is the time of year that the Earth goes through the shattered remains of a comet that actually began disintegrating around the time of the Civil War. Amazing, we are still feeling the effects every year at the same time, just like clockwork.

As I sat waiting for the light show I was certain would be spectacular, I began to grow restless when no shooting “stars” were visible immediately. After maybe 6 or 7 minutes I saw something fly across my peripheral vision…and then it was gone…so fast I thought “Did I really see what I thought I saw?” So I waited for another…and waited. More time passed and I was about to convince myself I had seen a random firefly rather than a meteor when right in front of me swoosh…one flew past…and went out as suddenly as it had appeared. Now that was thrilling! I couldn’t wait to see the next, and the next…the time in between was pretty much the same…every 6 minutes or so, but once I had seen a sure meteor, I KNEW I would see another one, so the wait felt shorter each time one flew past my line of vision. I never doubted again that I would see exactly what I had come out to see…a life event.

As I gathered my things and came indoors I realized I had witnessed a life lesson for myself. So many times we ask, we pray, we plead for opportunities to change our life, our job, our home. We wait on those opportunities…and we wait. We think there will be a “sign in the sky” or some type of out of the ordinary event that will give us the assurance that THIS is what we need to do, or THAT is where we need to go with our path. Many times the chance to make a real life change comes by so quickly, we aren’t even sure we really saw, or heard, what we thought we did. So we continue to wait for change to happen on its own. Time passes and we think we really didn’t see the opportunity clearly and maybe we were wrong to even think that…oh, there goes another opportunity whizzing by…much brighter than the first! This is when we may get excited…maybe, just maybe, I am on the right path this time…maybe this is where I am supposed to be, doing what I am supposed to do. And maybe…when we were so heartsick, lonely ,afraid or feeling as if we were in a huge rut we didn’t see the opportunities coming, just like clockwork, every year, every month, or day to give us the permission to accept them and pursue our own contentment.

In the same way the comet exploded into tiny fragments, with millions of pieces flying through the air and our planet barreling through those fragments for the last 150 plus years…maybe we are guilty of spinning through opportunity after opportunity, rather than seeing them right in front of us because we were looking for that one big “something” rather than the tiny little pieces that would make the spectacular life we have always wanted become a reality.

In the Bible, 2^nd Corinthians says our troubles are “light and momentary” but achieving a far greater thing in eternal ways. Perhaps all the light and momentary opportunities, just like the meteors that went flying past and were gone, are just the pre-show to the really wonderful life that is to come…if only we reach out and take hold of them before they are gone. I only know, I don’t want to be sitting in a lawn chair watching my opportunities…and my real life path…go flying past anymore. It’s time to gather the light and momentary and turn it into something lasting and true .