"Fate will see you through..."

One of my best friends, Lula, and I used to say this every other night,

“Star light, star bright
First star I see tonight, 
I wish I may, I wish I might
Have this wish, I wish tonight…”

I don’t know if my dear friend actually ever made any wishes, but I sure did.
I was a dreamer, I still am.
I wished for silly, young-girl things like, “Please, oh please let this boy at school have a secret crush on me“, or “I hope I get an iPod for my birthday and a carrot cake even bigger than last years!” Hopefully I was never like darling Charlotte, from Disney’s Princess and the Frog…I will just go ahead and say no since I never had Miss Charlotte’s gloriously charming Southern drawl, ya’ll.

Regardless, I never wished for everything in the world, my mother brought me up differently. Instead, I worked hard to have everything in the world that I wanted.
I had to.
That will probably never change, unless I found a genie’s lamp hidden in the White Desert of Egypt this year.
*Fingers crossed*

However, I caught myself wishing on a star the other night. I felt a quite silly at first, but it was the first star I had seen in a long time due to the cold and mysterious darkness that is Berlin. I smiled shyly to myself and felt much happier, and warmer, than moments before. I wished simply, “God…please….”
I quickly realized that my wishes, all this time, were actually prayers.
How amusing.

I can recall so many times where I felt so consumed, slightly terrified, and just lost from living with reckless abandon–but was always relieved by the blankets of stars before me. I always recall walking home at night in Gulu, Uganda and how I would say prayers of safety, while looking up at the stars for guidance and direction. I would drive home to Knoxville, Tennessee in the smog of the Smokey Mountains, with not much else than stars and prayers for light. I walked home in the desert of Cairo, Egypt after staying a little too late in the library, and was terrified of being picked up by a crazy driver but the shining, beacons of light quickly led me to my door, and my prayers evidently kept me safe.

I’ll admit that praying makes me feel much better, stronger, and less vulnerable than wishing on stars. My closest friends have diagnosed me with a little case of the winter blues, nasty stuff it is. Thanks to their great prescriptions and suggestions I have been focusing on mindfulness lately and have been doing things, for me.  I have been painting my nails every other day, with insane designs and cornea-burning bright colors, no less. My long lost friends and I have Skyped for more hours than I can easily count. I baked two loaves of homemade spice bread, as well as an unruly batch of peanutbutter honey oatmeal raisin cookies in the past week and a half! I went running…and was immediately distracted by a ghostly looking bookstore, that I swiftly ran into instead. I have been practicing my German, aber mein Deutsch ist immer noch schlect. I have prayed every night and intend to go to church again this week, for the second time in half a year.

I suppose that sending your wishes to God, or a higher deity of sorts, is much more fruitful than wishing on stars, although He did make those beautiful stars so perhaps, just maybe, they’re meant for wishing on too.

What about you, have you ever wished on a star or felt comforted by their presence? What things do you wish for in your life? 

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