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Hey.

It’s been a good while since I’ve gotten to sit down here and write out a thought or two as they pass through my head. (This site is called “Greg’s Head” after all, so it should live up to its name every now and again…) I don’t really feel that I have the time to sit and do so now—dishes to wash, kitchen to clean, work to do—but I almost feel I really can’t not.

(Nice double negative there.)

Tonight I noticed something on our bathroom sink. It was a shriveling up leaf that our daughter, Kirsten, had harvested not too long ago. It was likely discovered on a walk with Dad and some of her siblings. She found it interesting, and, as is her wont, she “collected” it. (It makes me smile even as I write this down to think of her various “collections”. She’s quite good at it!)

Something in me recognized that this is the stuff of life. Not the bills I am constantly juggling. (Definitely not the Bills who play football… yikes!) Not the job that I do, nor the every day schedule of life.

But within that daily framework come these moments. These pieces of who we really are. The times we stop to notice things, to enjoy the things that we really enjoy. And tonight, even though my precious daughter Kirstie is 100 miles away from me at her Grandma’s house… the beauty of her innocent love for life refreshed my spirit a bit, and has placed a recurring smile on my face.

Whether it’s a leaf, or a piece of pavement from the never-ending road construction in front of our house, or a nut, or a cool bug, or a stick, or any other sort of thing she fancies that I, or most other busy older people would consider no different than what we through in our trash bins … it signifies something deeper. Purer. The essence of life.

God built this place for us. He made it for us, and us for it. Too often we get caught up in the stuff that we’ve built (or that is building us) and we lose sight of the simple “treasures” that are around us. They can be as simple and ordinary—and, in most tangible ways, meaningless—as the leaf sitting on my bathroom sink…

Or, they can be as profoundly amazing as the daughter God made from me who reminds me to smile along the way. (And gives me plenty of smiles along the way, too.)

Thanks, Kirsten. And I hope you are smiling about something wonderful tonight.