Searching for the Moon

Jake wants to be Jake for Halloween- Jake, the pirate, that is.  The costume is less than a month old and it’s been worn so much I’m pretty sure we could retire it on November 1. 

This is my child who does not dress up.  Let me rephrase that.  He loves to pick out his own outfits and create hilarious un-fashion statements and up until 2013 couldn’t care less that everybody else wears costumes on Halloween.  When he was a wee three months old, we dressed him in a fluffy green dinosaur costume and took way too many pictures than were necessary to capture the memory and now I’m wondering if that had something to do with his refusal to wear a costume of any kind for the past two years. 

 

But this year, he is the brave, the adventurous, the conquering… Pirate Boy. And the bonus- pirates wear boots!

I love my son for so many different reasons.  But my favorite thing about Jake is that I can never, ever figure him out. When he wanted a telescope to go along with his pirate costume, I thought I knew why.  I reasoned that it must be for searching for treasure or scoping out the next adventure.  Nope. The reason he sleeps with the thing and tucks it under his arm on the way out the back door at 6:30 am is so that he can get a real good look at the moon. 

Another question I’ve pondered is whether or not we read Goodnight Moon one too many times.  Jake loves the moon!  He is constantly searching for it and celebrates wildly when he finds it.  He will make you believe that the single greatest thing about any given day is finding the moon.  He will make sure you know he has found it. 

Jake knows it can’t always be seen up in the sky, but that does not erase his determination.  He doesn’t pout or cry when it’s hidden.  He just folds up his telescope, tucks it back underneath his arm and waits.  But he never truly stops looking for the moon.  And because he never stops looking for it, Jake can find the moon on a sunny day.

I don’t search for the moon just because I might find it.  It’s just the moon, after all.  And this grieves me.  How many other things do I miss because my sense of wonder has gone missing?  What if, like Jake, I woke up every day with determination and belief strapped to my hip and looked and looked and searched and searched for something, anything? Could I be an adventure-seeker who never gives up until I find that one treasured thing?

Psalm 25:3 says, No one who hopes in you will ever be put to shame.  Hope is translated “to wait, look eagerly for, expect.”  

What if instead of the moon, it was Hope that I scoured each day for?  Would I find it in the most unlikely places?  At unexpected times?  Would I keep looking even if I couldn’t see it for days?  Would I celebrate in awe and wonder when eventually it was found?  Would I smile and go about my day, keeping it to myself or would I grab those around me, and shout at the top of my lungs, “There it is! There it is!”?