A Good Story, Still Unfolding

An Invitation to Notice

The invitation to notice is tender and reciprocal. It moves quietly between me and the children in my life, between the novels I read and the churn of the news cycle. It lives in the moment I pause to learn the name of a wildflower, and in the certainty that a dove will answer its mate’s call—if I only stop to listen. Noticing feels like opening a well-loved story: known since the beginning of time, and yet new each day.

Last Monday, I welcomed ten young writers to a week-long creative writing camp by telling them this story: As a child, C.S. Lewis spent months sick in bed. One day, his older brother brought him a small world—twigs and pebbles arranged carefully inside the lid of a biscuit tin. That tiny world sparked in Lewis a deep sense of wonder. It was his first taste of world-building—and the perfect doorway for my students to step through as they began imagining their own.

As they wandered the yard gathering bits of moss and the feathery tops of grass, they stepped fully into the invitation. Small things became worthy of wonder, curiosity took the lead. While arranging their findings into little worlds, they learned how to pay attention, to let the ordinary become extraordinary.

My days seesawed between weaving magic for my campers and careening back into life and dirty dishes—showing up for my people, then frantically vacuuming up the traces the next morning before the writers fluttered back into my living room. By Thursday, I was second-guessing the promise I’d made to meet a friend at an art symposium. The event was outside, rain was in the forecast, and the week had stretched me thin. Still, there’s something about keeping a plan you almost cancel—something about showing up, even when you’d rather not—that often turns out to matter more than you expect.

I pried Theo away from his Legos with the promise of men carving great sculptures from hunks of stone. “You’ll love it,” I told him. He grabbed his sketchbook, and we drove across town under heavy clouds and bright patches of sunlight.

We arrived to a small maze of tents and clouds of white limestone dust, generator fumes, and the loud ratcheting of tools. I thought to myself, Okay, we’ll stay twenty minutes. But Theo wandered from carver to carver, saying hello, listening, nodding in recognition as they explained what they were shaping from solid rock. He answered their questions too—“nearly seven,” he said, beaming at their surprise and their comments on his height. “Give it a couple years,” they said, “and we’ll have a chisel with your name on it.”

Theo found a special resonance with Bill and the hawk he was carving—a hawk he had begun years earlier and set aside as he turned to other projects, honing his skills until this year, when he finally felt ready to finish it. I watched Theo watch Bill as he considered the hawk from every angle, and I watched Theo move around Bill as he moved around the hawk, his sketchbook steady in one hand, gaze serious and intent.

The hawk had invited Bill to notice. Bill had welcomed Theo into the joy of noticing. And I saw all of it unfolding in front of me. The rush of the week, the pile of waiting laundry, the looming downpour all ceased to matter. In that shared space, we understood, I think, that we were part of a good story. One that would be redeemed in the end. One where grace prevailed—if we only could see things clearly.

At home, I turned back to the laundry and the beginnings of packing for a trip the following week. Sam followed me into the bedroom, toting a basket of his own and climbing inside while I matched socks and made mental lists. I glanced up—and there it was, the invitation. The late afternoon sun slanted through the shade, turning his wild, post-nap hair into a halo as his little face peeked out from the basket he’d claimed as his own.

I rushed to the living room for my phone and returned to capture the brilliant, fleeting beauty of now. I see you. I see you, I see you.

One week after inviting young writers into the quiet wonder hiding in plain sight, I boarded a plane with my daughter. A few days at the Oregon coast, just the two of us—a trip I’d booked months ago, acting on some subtle intuition that nine-and-a-half would be pivotal, somehow, for both of us. As June approached, I found myself thanking God for that quiet guidance, watching her step into the push-pull of tweendom—drawn forward into independence, then shrinking back, needing to know I was still close by.

On Tuesday, we entered the International Rose Test Garden in Portland, carrying a borrowed picnic blanket and a set of watercolors my cousin Lisa had thrust into our hands before we left. Artists know, don’t they? They just know what you’ll need when you go out to meet beauty.

Penny and I wandered down the rows, touching waxy petals that were hand-painted—she said—by fairies in the night. We leaned in to breathe them deeply, dizzy with their sweetness, and gave new names to the countless varieties. Every few steps, she paused to take pictures with the little camera I’d given her years ago, trying to capture it all.

“It’s okay,” I told her. “It’s okay to just be.”

I gave her space, turning to marvel at a rose bush offering full bouquets of blooms from each thorny branch. When I looked back, her camera was raised, catching me mid-wonder. Her sly, knowing grin peeked out behind the lens.

She was noticing me.

She was noticing me noticing the roses—and I was absolutely gobsmacked by it all. The rip-roaring pace of life had, for a moment, yielded to the sacred authority of now. We were there. Together. Awake. Immersed in the breathtaking beauty of life.

What more could I possibly ask for?

I will tell you.

God, keep inviting me further in. Stop me in my tracks. Let me see this world—these souls—as You see them. Teach me to say yes.

I want to keep saying yes—yes to wonder, to stillness, to the unnoticed things that shimmer quietly at the edges of my attention. I want to keep receiving the invitations passed to me through my children’s questions, through carved stone and blooming roses, through quiet baskets of laundry and borrowed watercolors.

These are not small things. They are the story itself. And I want to live it fully—awake, grateful, and willing to be moved.