When I was in Memphis a few weeks ago, we happened to drive past a field of cotton. I was amazed by what I was seeing out my window, so my friend Kelly offered to pull the car over so I could take a closer look. I got out and walked into the field, stopping occasionally to look at the cotton up close. The other girls had gotten out of the car, too, but I was out there in it by myself while they stood at the edge of it. I can’t explain why I do that, but it’s just my nature — if I’m seeing something new, I want to be absolutely surrounded by it.

I walk into the cotton field. It’s just what I do.

– — –

The next night I found myself in Gosling’s family’s living room. They were out of town and he had been house sitting the whole weekend. We had ran some errands and were now back at the house so he could load boxes of books into both of our cars to bring back to school.

As he brought one box down the steps, he pulled a book out of it and told me I should read it while he finished loading the cars. It was a small book, twenty pages or so with just a couple of lines of writing per page. The book is based around the lyrics to Lee Ann Womack’s song I Hope You Dance, a song I’ve heard a hundred times before that night.

And yet somehow heard for the first time that night.

– — –

He left me on the couch with the book and went back upstairs to get another box. A quick glance at the cover of the book told me what I had already suspected — it’s was a book for parents to give to their children. I opened it up, disinterested until I read the first line –

“This is from me to you. This is the truth.”

As I read though the first few pages, I couldn’t help but think about God as a parent, something that’s on my mind nearly all the time. I started thinking about how someone could imagine God writing this book for them, almost as if He was their parent. And then I turned the page.

“I hope you never lose your sense of wonder.”

– — –

Maybe it’s because I had to be so much older than my age these past few years?  Maybe that’s why I’m enjoying being younger, finding times that I missed during the last seven years.

He sees when I take a shorter lunch break so that I can lay on the bench underneath that really big tree just because I like to look at the sky between the leaves. He sees when I purposely leave my umbrella in the car because sometimes I want to feel the rain. He sees when I go out my front door in my pajamas when it snows, just because I want to catch a few snowflakes in my hands.

And He sees when I go walking into the cotton field, just because I want to see it up close for myself.

– — –

I hope I never lose my sense of wonder.

But I suspect He hopes it even more than I do.