Grace Over Guilt

How an encounter with the Northern Lights helped me better understand the intimate love of God.

Whether or not we call it a bucket list, I think it’s true that many of us have one—that list of things, unique to us, that we really want to do at some point in our lives.

One of my bucket list items, added to my list somewhere around a decade ago, was to see the Northern Lights. The longing to see them grew as the years went by, as I felt drawn more and more to experiences that cultivate a sense of awe. The book Let Beauty Speak: The Art of Being Human in a Culture of Noise talks about the importance of wonder in our lives. He writes, “By teaching us to long for things seemingly beyond our reach, beauty proects us against pride and false self-sufficiency. It leads to humility born of wonder … To have a world that is true, good and beautiful, we must sit in silence long enough to hunger for more.”

A Chance at Aurora

The past several years, my desire to see the Northern Lights was so great that I would pay attention to news reports and forecasts that even hinted at the hope that the aurora might dip south of the Wisconsin border to where we live in northern Illinois. I was willing to lose sleep and even drive a few hours if it meant I could see them. Time and time again I’d set an alarm for the middle of the night and check the skies and the internet to see if it had actually happened. For years, nothing did.

Until one day this May, my father-in-law pulled up for a visit and promptly announced that we might get to see the Northern Lights that night.

Yeah right, I thought. I had heard this story many times before. Still, I checked. At 10:00pm, I found Twitter/X awash with pictures of green and purple skies, even some from downtown Chicago. Oh my goodness. It was time!

We scurried to the front yard to watch the last crest of a thick wave of clouds covering the stars above our heads. Moments later, it began to rain. My heart sunk. I had missed the only 30 minute window in my adult life where the aurora was likely right above me. I hoped I hadn’t missed it for good.

I went back online and looked at the radar forecast. From what I could see, the rain was set to pass around 1:30am and the skies might clear at that time too. I set an alarm for 1:30 and went to sleep after praying a fervent prayer. Please, I asked God. Please. It felt like a silly little thing to pray so passionately about, but also, it was an honest prayer and I believe that God enjoys hearing from us, whatever is on our hearts.

While I slept, I dreamt one of the most vivid dreams I’ve ever had in my life. Only two other dreams have ever come close to this. The first was the dream I had days before my confirmation and a couple of weeks before I learned I was pregnant with our third, that I believe helped prepare me for the challenging pregnancy to come. The second was the dream I had a couple of weeks before my grandpa died, that I believe helped prepare me to be by his side as he passed away. In my dream on the night of the aurora, my family walked outside to a sky alight with dancing ribbons of color. All of our neighbors came out to watch as the colors moved and swayed. When I woke up on my own at 1:28am, two minutes before my alarm was set to buzz, it took some time to realize that I hadn’t yet seen the aurora, but had, in fact, only dreamed it so vividly that it felt real.

I rushed to the window of our bedroom and squinted. I held my phone up and took a picture, because I had read that phones do a better job picking up on the colors that our eyes can’t quite see. The sky looked a bit greener than usual through the lens. I rushed down the stairs, opened the front door, and ran outside.

The view from the window.

Dancing Colors

Above me, there they were, the Northern Lights spraying their dancing colors across the sky above our house. They were everywhere, in shifting rays, and looked almost as if they were centered above our home, splaying out in every direction.

I woke up several members of our family who groggily tromped down the stairs and took a quick peek before going back to bed. I asked who wanted to go on a drive with me—I figured if the lights looked this good here, that out in the countryside, away from streetlamps and light pollution that it might even be brighter.

One by one, each of them opted to head back up to sleep, and soon it was me, standing in the yard, the only one out in the whole neighborhood as far as I could tell. Everyone else was sleeping, which meant reality was a bit different from my dream, but also not so different because of the beauty and brightness.

So I grabbed my keys and got in the van and went for a drive. Before pulling out of the driveway, I turned on Farmhouse by Phish and played it on repeat as I headed north into the farmlands of southern Wisconsin. I picked that song because it’s about the night the singer and his bandmate saw the Northern Lights for the first time. It became the soundtrack to a memorable evening.

About twenty minutes north of my house, around 2:30 in the morning, I pulled off into a sideroad that offered a nice wide view of the sky and minimal light pollution.

I got out of the van and looked up. And I experienced awe…the feeling that I am so very small, but in the best of ways. I experienced beauty, humbled by something so much bigger than myself. The wide swath of sky was a black canvas with green and purple paint that danced slowly, pulsing to music I couldn’t hear with my ears but knew with my heart.

I think I understand a bit better what the shepherds might have felt as they stared up at the heavenly host in the sky on the night of Jesus’s birth.

Somewhere around 3:30am, I headed for home, hitting the pillow about a half hour later after snapping one more special shot, my heart so full it felt like it might burst from my chest.

Enter The Guilt

The next day both my heart and my mind worked to process what had happened. It was a spiritual encounter, profound, a thing that changed my perspective on my place in the world and the bigness of God and the vastness of creation.

It had been an incredibly precious time. But it wasn’t long before a little voice began to snake through those pondering parts of me, telling me that my family missed out because I didn’t make them get in the van with me. Telling me that I should have tried harder to create a special moment for everyone. Something about it felt selfish, that I had let go too easily and that others might resent me for it once they heard the story of the things I had seen.

You see, I am a curator of memory-making moments in our home. My husband creates memories too, but I am the one who coordinates the big things like Christmas morning, and Easter, and the like. I love doing it. I love buying gifts and building traditions…all things I hope our kids will carry with them in their hearts long after they leave the walls of our home. And the voice inside me was telling me that I missed an opportunity for a memory, and that feeling began to overshadow the beauty I had experienced the night before.

It took a bit of prayer and a good talk with my husband to untangle the knot that had begun to form.

Accepting the Gift

I truly believe when something happens it is either the way God meant it to happen, or the way that God allowed it to happen. And that in either case, God uses what happens for our good, if we let Him. For me, this means that God, at the very least, allowed me to experience the Northern Lights on my own, and that he also wants to use it for my good.

I’ve been receiving spiritual direction for over a year, and one of the constant themes of my prayer life and my relationship with Jesus is letting go of the idea that I need to somehow earn His love, or that my loveableness is tied up with the things I accomplish. Another theme is my desire to be known and loved for who I am.

After some time, I considered letting go of the guilt and started wondering what if God actually meant for me to experience the aurora solo?

God saw me wake up over and over again for years and check the skies. He knew what it would mean. Maybe that time alone was a testament to how well I am known. Maybe God knew the deep desire of my heart to see them, and was offering me a gift out of His extravagent love for me. A love I didn’t earn, but that is there all the same.

JP was quick to mention if we had our kids we would have had to navigate their fatigue, their strong tendency to want us to meet their needs immediately and at all times, and those factors likely would have significantly changed the profound stretch of awe in solitude that I was able to experience because no one else was there.

Letting Go

And so, after a couple of days of wrestling, I was able to indeed let go of the guilt and embrace the gift instead. JP and I were out to dinner and I was sharing with him what it was like under the inky sky and a flood of shifting colors. I started to cry at the table.

I have had other moments like this, where God’s love for me is so close I can almost feel the warmth of it on my skin and in my heart. Most days, I don’t feel it as profoundly, but but still trust it and seek to understand it better. This was the first time in a while where I felt God reach down and wrap me up in a hug that said you are known and you are deeply loved and here is something special just for you to remind you that both those things are true.

As a mom, out of love I am the curator of memories, the one who delicately lays precious experiences before my children so that when they are grown they will look back and have a montage of happy pictures imprinted on their minds and their hearts. A childhood hued in light and laughter and family roots planted deep. Those things are all good for me to do, and I love to do it.

On the night of the aurora, God curated a precious memory for me and all I had to do was turn my face toward Him and let Him wrap me in a hug that reminds me that I am His child, and that he does these things for me too. He is curating a life that paves the way for me from here to heaven. While many parts of that journey contain struggle, my story, and all of our stories really, are dotted with moments of extravagent gift and grace if we have the eyes to see them and the gumption, at times, to awaken and let ourselves drink deeply of awe.

This letter is free for you to read, but it took time and energy to produce. If you’re interested in supporting the work of This Catholic Family, I would be honored if you would prayerfully consider upgrading your subscription. Or, you can always buy me a coffee here.

-Lorelei

My Children’s Books

I write middle grade novels! My three books are currently published with Penguin Random House. While I’m published in the secular market, all of my stories are deeply informed and inspired by my Catholic faith. They are a good fit for kids 8 and up who can navigate some suspense/spookiness.

Titles:

The Circus of Stolen Dreams
The Edge of In Between (A Catholic & CS Lewis inspired retelling of The Secret Garden)
The Night Train (features a Catholic sidekick/friend)

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The Least Surprising Part of My Catholic Conversion