Notice God noticing YOU

He hears loud bar music from many loud bars on Duval Street.  Locals drive cars trying to pass clueless tourists who assume they own the road because they’re on vacation.  Duval is packed from its beginning to end with visitors. 

The sounds, sights, and smells are a blur…until he sees her…before she sees him.

She dances and entrances him in her sway, the way she bends time and space around her rhythm.  She reveals what God had in mind when He made Eve, and what Adam felt when she walked to him in the garden.  No seduction or temptation.  Awe and appreciation.  Then it happened.

She noticed him noticing her, and she liked it…and him.  Before she simply danced.  Now she danced for him.  He noticed her noticing him noticing her.  They connected.  The song became their song.  Out of all the men on Duval who watched her dance, she only noticed him noticing her.  All others were a blur for her as well.

***

Dark water

Hums.

Swirls and circles and until it’s just too tight.

Then blinding light and biting cold

Then faces, noises, smells, sounds, hot, cold, needle pricks on finger tips and heels

Then warmth

Thirst quenched.

The voice…the hum that was distant now close..familiar.

Many voices and noises and feelings and blurs and motions.

Then the voice.  Sleep.

Bitter thirsty hunger.  Crying.

The voice. (And sometimes the other voice.)

Sleep.

Crying.  Milk.  The voice.  (Cry for milk and the voice.)

Crying.  No milk.  No voice. 

Loud crying.  Milk.  The voice.  (Cry LOUD for milk and the voice.)  [And sometimes the other voice.]

The face.  Smiling.  With the voice.  (The other face.  Smiling.  With the other voice.)

The same face and voice give milk.  The same other face and voice feel safe.

I know these faces!

I know these voices!

I smile when I see them.

I cry when I don’t.

I know that I exist when they are in the room.

When they are gone, I feel gone.

The moment the dancer noticed her admirer admiring her, the moment she welcomed his admiration, and danced for his admiration….

The moments in which the baby knew the faces of father and mother, and responded to these faces noticing him…

This is the awareness of God’s constant awareness of us, and us welcoming his awareness, dancing for him, smiling back at him.

Notice God noticing.

This is life.