MAY YOU ALWAYS BE THE ONE WHO SEES THE LIGHT IN THE LITTLE THINGS

to my little one (and the little one in all of us):

may you always be the one

who sees the Light in the little things

when the world is in a rush around you

may you be the one who stops to notice

where the hope gets through.

and years from now,

when you have grown up

and the world has changed,

I hope

Glorious Light

finds you all the same.

for this road will not be easy

but you are free to keep traveling, anyway.

trusting that even your most uncertain moments

are wrapped in endless, boundless, grace.

and what is grace?

it is unmerited favor,

the faithful rhythm you cannot see

saying, “you do not always have to explain why or how

you’re seeing the Light in the little things.”

simply trust

believe.

Word of the day: HOPE

Many of the poems were written in my new book “All Along You Were Blooming” (comes out next Tuesday!) were written when I was pregnant with my son. I was extremely fatigued and there were many moments that I felt like I couldn’t carry this project out. There were also so many moments where this kept me going, “well, at least I can write for him. I hope he reads these words someday.”

I can’t tell you how much pressure I feel to deliver a good book, a worthy book…a book that makes people feel like it was worthy of their time, energy, money…I love to create, and this is also true: it never stops being intimidating. I still get stuck in my head. Every. Single. Day. This book and everything I write is not about having all of the answers, but about choosing to carry on, with grace. Choosing to look for Light in the places where my mind tries to tell me there are only shadows.

In this season, I am hoping to hold on to childlike wonder. I am hoping to write from the days of my youth where I filled my dollar store notebooks with colored pencils and I wrote songs on an untuned piano. The time in my life where my dyslexia didn’t stop me from writing.

I hope for whatever part of you that tends to see the hope where there is none, you remember this today. I hope that you can see how Glorious Light still finds you in the most simple, yet grace-filled ways.

01. My son notices light everywhere…the morning sun between the blinds, the red light on the ceiling beaming from the cars driving by outside, when the sky is clear and he gets to see the moon and stars…one of the many things I love about this is that my parents tell me that when I was little one of my first words was ‘light.’ They took me to go look at Christmas lights and that’s when I started to say it. But here's the somewhat funny thing: after we were no longer looking at the Christmas lights, I started excitedly pointing out every single light... gas station signs, street lamps on the interstate, and I would shout, “LIGHT LIGHT LIGHT! I became obsessed. A few months ago we were recalling this story and I started to think how neat it was that after all these years, I am still looking for Light in the little things.

02. You’ll see that the moon and stars illustrated in the first frame are also in the second frame and every painting after. These words are for my little one, and also, little Morgan, too. I want to notice what he notices. I want to have the same childlike faith he has. I want to feel my emotions fully and trust the way he does. Whether you have a little one in your life or not, we all have this in common: we were all younger at some point. We were all infants and toddlers, awkwardly fumbling our way through life who had a lot of big lessons to learn. And all the while, we were amazed by the smallest things. In my work, I love exploring the possibility of how childlike wonder and childlike faith can follow us into adulthood, even in subtle ways. That’s why I kept the little moon and star illustration going in every frame that follows the first one. I hope that the moments where we notice the Light pouring in is not a childhood thing, but despite all we have gone through, a continuum.

03. I was the furthest away from my parents when I backpacked through Europe at 19. I had never been out of the country prior to that moment and I cannot imagine how they must have felt, especially in a time when the internet connection was few and far between and I didn’t have a smartphone (this was 2009). I had this image of my son on a train, far away many years from now. I don’t know where he was going. I don’t know the story. I have no idea what the world will look like then. I just thought simply, ‘I just hope he sees where the Light gets in. And I hope he shares it with his friends and everyone he meets.’ And in a moment, that thought just gave me a little peace.

04. This is the only frame in the series that does not feature a human figure. This is intentional, as I thought about many of the photographs I take when I’m traveling. I’m often not in these images, as I am almost always taking them from behind the camera. I thought about how a child begins to see the world outside of the comfort of home and the people they know…it can be scary, intimidating, and lonely. And as we all begin to face unknowns, it can seem impossible to find other people on the road who are feeling what we feel. I wanted whoever saw this image and poem to know that despite feeling alone, they are not alone. Light will guide them along the road. I had this image of going into a tunnel, through the mountains. I remember the first time I drove into a mountain tunnel (I’m not sure of their proper name) on a 6 am 6 hour drive from Denver to Grand Junction on I-70. I was expecting total darkness. I didn’t anticipate the little lights on the walls of the tunnel. What a gift it is to have moments like this. To expect nothing but shadows and loneliness and to find that even then, you are being guided along and perhaps no matter how it looked only moments ago, you would not be alone.

05. This is the only frame in the series that I painted in color. When I thought of ending the poem on ‘grace’ the color blue came to mind, and I didn’t know why. Immediately after, I tried to figure out why, and then I thought about something my therapist has been reminding me of: “it is okay to not know why.” I look for Light and beauty in so many things but I oftentimes forget to just slow down, breathe and remember…I don’t have to find the poem, the painting, the song, or the story in everything. I am free to just trust that grace is more than enough for whatever I am thinking or feeling. I am free to believe that despite the chaos, there is a rhythm. There is hope. There is more ahead of me. And I am free to trust. And in the meantime, it is a gift to be able to notice the Light in the little things.

Thanks for reading,
Morgan