I want to notice. I want to see the veins on leaves, winding trajectories of life and nourishment. Roads that lead to shade and rest and air and beauty.

I want to see how the wind takes form. How it moves with grace and power and becomes whatever it wants to be. Gust or breeze, destructive or restorative. I want to imprint its freedom and sound and feel onto my skin.

I want to notice the way that petals unfurl, falling open in contained surrender. Each one a part of the symphony, a part of the whole flower. Each one releasing invitation after invitation to the sunlight, to the bees, to the rain. To me.

I long to see how a child’s mind works. How it notices and catalogues the tiniest of details, how it translates twirling into giggles. Just to sit and be amazed by simplicity. Just to feel wonder at wonderfully ordinary things.

I want to notice the gleam in a father’s eye as his little girl runs towards the swingset. I want to see the way his heartbreaks and swells at her boundless form running away from his arms and towards life and laughter ahead of her.

I want to see the way that an elderly couple holds hands. How their thin and age-spotted skin reveals veins that run just below the surface full of stories and love and sacrifice. Full of the other’s life as much as their own.

I want to see how blades of grass poke between my son’s toes. How the thin green stalks tickle his soft skin and how he lays his head back in it like a pillow while he gazes up at the clouds. I want to see him smile and point and tell me what his eyes see. And then I want to see it too.

I want to pay attention. I want to catch it. I want to understand the complexity in simplicity.

I want to see God’s love letter to me in all of it. The beauty and passion and glory in it all. Every moment a message to decipher. A message that holds the promise of simple joys and profound realization.

I want to see how all of creation is a gentle and unrelenting barrage of his capable hands at work. How all of creation is his effort to get my attention and keep it.

So, I write.

I close my eyes and train my thoughts on every detail. On the smiles, on the unsaid things, on the movement and feelings and sounds and smells. I force my mind to see it and then it leaks out of my fingers onto the page.

So you can see it too.