The Words that Started it All

I’ve got a thinker, everybody.  She took Stephen Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time” with her on the bus – kind of thinker.  Let me be clear, she is a normal, messy-room, won’t brush her hair, music/Harry Potter loving, pre-teen in every other way.

But when you ask for her opinion on books, history, politics, friendship, just about anything – she’ll tell you things that will knock your socks off. Cuts through the you-know-what.  I admire that and wonder if I was like that myself, before life gave me a Masters degree in you-know-what, just like the rest of us.

One Sunday, I’d gotten her youth group time wrong at church (again) so she sat with me during the service.  On these occasions, my only wish is that they sit up straight, eyes open and take away even the tiniest hint of what’s being discussed. Considering my Catholic school upbringing, I think I’m being generous.

So, during the service, I look over at my thinker, who I ASSUME is doodling on the program.

Doodling.

On.

The Program.

I pre-furrowed my brow, miss the majority of what is said in church next because I’m yelling at her in my head about how she should be listening.

So after church, I pick up the program and I look.  There at the bottom of the paper, amidst drawings of stars, is this…

I KNOW THE UNIVERSE IS LIMITLESS

BECAUSE GOD’S IMAGINATION IS

A peek at the card in my shop that was inspired by my daughter

It was one of those classic, “they teach you more than you teach them” moments. She gets it, the whole picture, above and beyond the message I got in the pew that Sunday.  I saved that scrap of paper and it planted the seed of what became the stationery shop “totlosophy“.

Cat’s Eye Nebula taken by the Hubble telescope

Because whatever name you give it, and whatever your personal beliefs, the unbelievable vastness of the universe is awesome in the truest sense of the word.  Kids seem to get that, even if they don’t know how to brush their own teeth.

So when my thinker is close to me, I keep my ears and heart open because she knows more than she’s letting on and I’ll bet you have someone like that in your life, too.