When I was a child, I loved to watch stars. I’d sit in the sheep pasture watching them slowly emerge at dusk, or gaze for hours lying on a quilt outside, “sleeping under the stars” when Dad took us up into the canyon near us. I loved the Milky Way and its promise of the reality of stars so far away that only soft light could be perceived. 

When I realized that most of my grandchildren had never even seen the Milky Way due to the light and air pollution that obscures our view, I scheduled our annual family reunion camping trip near Capitol Reef, a dark sky park. I really wanted them to see the stars as I remembered them.

Of course, after the first night I realized that the best star viewing is at the time when cranky tots and weary parents are sleeping. But on our last night, some bleary eyed family members met me in the cold air at 3 am to gaze and whisper in wonder. And some skilled cell phone photographers preserved the evidence for the rest of us.

As I snuggled back into my camp cot, pleased that loved ones had finally seen what I always knew was there, I thought about other truths that I know by my experience that many of them don’t yet know or believe.

And then I realized that there are many more beautiful truths that are beyond my sight and knowledge, that I now only see as if through a glass darkly.  Those truths, too,  are still there, right where they have always, eternally been. At some moment yet to come, they’ll be as clear and familiar to me as the Milky Way was that night. I slept again, with awe and joy.

~Nita Smith