Sacred Spaces

Whenever we drive more than ten minutes from our house, Magoo asks me if we are still in Illinois.  Yes, I tell her.  Illinois is big.  To which she usually says something to the fact of Illinois being the biggest state in the history of the world.  I don’t bother correcting her.  She’s only five.

To her, the world is huge.  And it should be because our world is huge.  And I think that is why our own spaces in the world can seem so sacred to us.

I know we’re not supposed to idolize things.  People matter more than things.  Values matter more than things.  Most anything that means anything at all matters more than things.  But sometimes things matter too.  And sometimes places matter.

In a basket under my bed, I have the pregnancy tests I took with each of the three girls.

On a stud behind the drywall in our family room, are etched our initials.

I have a basket for each of the girls that contains their hospital tee-shirts and receiving blankets as well as their baptismal candles and blankets.

When I walk out my back door, I remember all the times the girls played in the trees in the backyard collecting pine cones. I remember the walks I used to take when it was just Magoo and I and I was so worried that even the gentle breeze was going to hurt her.

When I look at my stairs, I remember the time I almost fell down them trying to get to TJ to tell him we were pregnant.

Out at NIU, there is a bridge on the West side of campus where TJ got down on one knee and proposed to me.

At Marquette, on the corner of 16th and Wells, there is an apartment where he first asked me to be his girlfriend.

All of these places and all of these things have meaning and are important.  They are sacred.  They remind us of something greater.  They connect us to something greater.  They remind us that though specks we may be in this world, our souls are eternal.  Our souls are connected to all of the great loves and losses and gifts and glories that have ever walked the Earth.

And so it’s hard sometimes.  I’ll tell myself not to get attached to places or to things.  But this is a big, huge, scary world that we live in, and some items and some places just make it seem less big and scary.  And some help tell the story of our lives.

So yes, most things that matter, matter more than things.  But sometimes things matter too.