On Noticing

delight surrounds us...do we see it?

noticing the details in this delightful local hotel

I walked slowly through the grocery store today. I wanted a rotisserie chicken for some nachos, and those birds weren’t fully cooked yet. I browsed the bakery, landed on a baguette, and found a delicious-looking salad in the deli case for my lunch. From there, I walked the aisles, keeping my eyes open for Publix’s wonderful BOGO deals, recognizing that it would be wise to resurrect some of the frugal shopping practices that I laid down several years ago. I found tea bags and BBQ sauce, some Parmesan crisps, and bacon. I couldn’t remember the last time I allowed myself to move slowly through a grocery store, look at brands, stop and wonder at the beautiful choices. Along with the store being unbusy and quiet, this slowness felt incredibly good.

I began reading Timothy Willard’s new book The Beauty Chasers a few days ago. He calls the reader to ponder, wonder, and marvel over creation + beauty with the admonishment that the only way to do that is to slow down. When my older children were young, slow living was one of my bedrock ideals. As they have grown and our lives have become more outward-focused, it becomes challenging to live slowly. True slow living (when not only the scheduling pace is slow, but my mind + heart are slow) makes space for noticing. It’s in the noticing of details in creation, in the facial expressions of a child telling a story, the new brand of Swedish almond cookies at the store, the way my adorable dog’s paws cross during her nap, the sound of the pop of glass bottle of elderflower lemonade, that brings delight + joy. The mundane becomes spectacular when the mind + heart are soft, engaged, and looking for beauty.

My mind and soul have lived distracted for a while. It doesn’t feel natural to live present in the moment. There is a notification of a text, a chime, an interruption to the flow of mindfulness that leads us to rest in the presence of God and His work around us. I miss delight because I am looking down, looking past, looking blank, disengaged from the right here, right now gifts. I want to be a slowed-down noticer again. More than scheduling shifts, this requires a degree of unplugged living. You can have all the time in the world and yet feel distracted, anxious, and mentally busy if you are checking your phone all day. When our brains are in that state, they don’t stop to stare at the lovely.

I remember when blogs came on the scene, and mothers with their Nikons took beautiful photos of the sky, nature walks, dinner tables, local farms, hikes. They were training their eyes to see, to notice, to model curiousity and wonder. I was enamored by the beauty of women and children leading simple lives, delighting in days of exploration, crafting, picking a perfect strawberry. Our children grew older, most flew the nest, and motherhood + domesticity morphed and changed for us. Strawberries can feel too “light” a topic now as we deal with the heavier themes of young adulthood. But maybe more strawberries is what we need.

There is a lot of summer left. Maybe July could be a month of noticing. I wonder how much better our mental + emotional health would be by staring at the rain puddles in the yard for a few minutes instead of someone else’s feed on our phone. We must begin to believe that the life in front of us is the best one, not the faux version of someone else’s a few thousand miles away. We aren’t missing out when we disconnect, we are receiving the good life given by the Lord in our here and now. We just have to look for it.