One night my family was sitting out on “the shoebox,” otherwise known as our back patio. The open end of the sideways “shoebox” faced outward, away from the house. Our apartment sat back-to-back with the others in our complex, all of which had a brick exterior, one living room, one tiny kitchen, two bathrooms, and three little bedrooms. Nothing, in fact, made that apartment anything remotely special or unique to live in other than one thing: Our Magic Kingdom. Behind my uninteresting door lay a world that was just waiting to be discovered. In reality, it was a large open space behind the complex with a small-to-medium sized pond and plenty of area to run and play. In my mind, it was a place where anything could be created and anything could happen.

            At the time I would have been eight to nine years old. Ann Arbor, Michigan was the second place that I had ever lived, and before my family moved there, we had lived on a small farm-like residence in Nebraska with one other family living on the property. This other family owned fourteen acres of land, and they had a daughter exactly my age. She was my best friend, and one of the only people that I ever really knew well enough not to be shy with. On account of this, the thought of making new friends was very daunting, but I soon found some girls that I got along with really well that lived in the same neighborhood as me. I remember how we would gather after school and play outside for hours. Right outside of our back patio door was a small, steep hill, then a short flat space, and then another small hill leading onto the pond. During the winter, we would sled down the hills onto the glassy surface and make “ice cream” out of milk, sugar, and the clean snow we found. On the right side of our apartment, below the hill, there was a small stream that flowed into the pond. We loved to follow that creek, as in our minds, it went on forever with no end. On many nights my friends and I would gather all the neighborhood children to come outside and play enormous games of tag, red rover, hide and go seek, football, and anything else we could think of. We would play until dark. One of the most fascinating things about our “little world” back there was the tunnel. It was dug directly into the side of the hill where the road passed above it, and the tunnel was our portal into a different world. It was like an adventure to pass through, and I can still remember the first time I rode my roller skates all the way through to the other side. On sunny days my friends and I would sit on top of it and wave to the walkers on the path passing down below.

            One day we decided to follow the path and see where it led us. We discovered that it curled around the pond, past our bench, and looped back around the front of the apartment complex. On our way back, I was looking around us at the pond on my right and the railroad tracks to our left. As I looked down, I realized that there was an overgrown valley hidden between the railroad tracks and the path. I convinced my friends to follow me down, as I had felt a daring urge to attempt the descent. We braved the thicket and made our way to the bottom, after sliding down the steep slope and catching ourselves on a tree. What we found down there turned out to be our sacred place, a secret we only told to the most trustworthy of friends. From where we stood in the valley we were hidden from the buildings and cars above our heads, while being concealed underneath the railroad tracks. Sometimes we would lie there, listening to the waterfall, waiting for a train to come roaring by so that we could feel it shake the ground. The most daring girls climbed to the top of the hill and stood on the tracks, despite our protests and warnings.

            As I sat in our shoebox that night, pondering the last five years, I couldn’t help but feel sad that my family was moving away the next day. It was the last time I would ever look upon our beloved pond, the last time I would ever see the golden sun going to sleep behind the horizon, and the last time I might ever see my friends. Most of all, I felt sad that my family would never be able to do what we were doing in that moment ever again : praying the rosary together on that patio…our patio. This sun and these stars were all that were left of my imaginary kingdom, which used to be my whole world.

And in that moment, I am sure that God spoke to me.

As I looked about me I felt that the sun was my heart, as fire is heat. The flush of the sky made all the water a mirror of pink, or a crystal chandelier that sparkled and danced, twinkling with a thousand different lights. And there was so much meaning in it; the world seemed, somehow, to be speaking. I suddenly knew that even though, of course, I would miss all these things dearly, it wasn’t the physical presence of them that was important – it was what I kept alive in my heart. I knew that they would never truly be gone, because I would never be able to forget them. And the most important thing, the thing that would be with me always, was God. He would never leave me. He was there in the crimson glow of the sunset that night, He was there in the faces of my family, and He would always be there to guide and protect me when I needed Him. That would never change. As bittersweet as that moment was, I will always remember it as a moment of happiness that changed my life forever. I have never felt such joy, such radiance, and such peace with the world as I felt that night sitting cross-legged under the stars with a rosary in my hand.

At the time, I didn’t realize everything that God was trying to show me. In fact, I don’t think I even understood it by half, but by giving me that moment He knew that I would someday come to understand, and He gave me a gift I will never lose. The incommunicable joy that I felt during that period of my life,  and especially during that moment, will never leave my memory as long as I live. It made me think of the music of angels, clear as day; or of birds who soared far above the earth into the sunlit clouds, never stopping to question why.

And now I can see why in those moments when everything seems to be falling apart, when you look around you and your life is in shambles, why it is in those moments that God chooses to speak to you. It’s because no matter what, He is there. He is looking out for you. He can always see the bigger picture.

And all I can think of to do is thank Him, for showing me that.