Ad Astra per Aspera

The day had been long and hard.  After working well into the night I wanted nothing more than to relax and the opportunity had finally arrived.  I lumbered my way through the thick dust cursing it and the country it belonged to all the way back to my truck.  The frigid winter of the Afghanistan desert taunted my body as if it knew how much I hated the cold.  A river of negativity flooded my mind.  I was tired, hungry, and freezing cold.  I sat down in the thick moon dust and leaned back looking to the sky.  It was that small motion that changed my frustration into awe. 

I was mesmerized by the shining beauty of what I discovered up there.  An instant calm came over me and my mind shifted its gears, automatically thinking poetically.  “Thank you father, for giving me something so beautiful in a place so ugly.”  My irritation at the cold and the horrible food I was eating turned to gratefulness.  I thanked God that I had food to nourish my body and clothes to warm it.  My gaze never left those stars as I sat there talking to my Heavenly Father and praising him for all his goodness and the blessings in my life.  

It was late and the desert was quiet.  Faint bursts of gunfire accompanied by occasional explosions were the only sounds that broke the silence.  To me the contrast in itself was poetic.  People where dying violently not too far away, I could hear them.  I was listening to man’s hatred as I looked at God’s love.   The fighting silenced and suddenly my mind was home.  I was in a Kansas wheat field laying on the bed of my truck and staring at the summer sky.  The stars popped here just like they did there.  No bright city lights to chase them away.  No smog to cover them up.  The stars were free to do what they did best, shine like Kansas fireflies on a July night.  I thought of my state motto, Ad Astra per Aspera,  “To the stars through difficulty.”  It seemed as if those stars were placed in the sky just to ease my troubled mind.  I sat there watching them until the cold drove me to hide my face under my blanket.   Lying there in the dark I said it outload to myself, “to the stars through difficulty”, and in peace I went to sleep.