Astronomy Mishaps

Two nights ago, I had the notion that Mars would be the brightest ever in years, and never so bright again for hundreds of years. I had recieved an email about it and heard a few of my friends discussing it. I told my suitemate Candice about it, and she was super-excited to go watch. I sent her out at midnight with a friend to look for it. She called a few moments later.

There was nothing to see. They had gazed from all over campus, and all they had seen was typical starlight.

I decided to look it up online from my room, and the information I found was ironically startling. The true date of the planet's brilliance had been August 2003! I felt ridiculously gullible but laughed a cleansing chuckle and appologized for wasting Candice's valuable time.

Today, however, at 5 a.m., there was another event in the heavens -- a lunar eclipse. I sat on the curb in front of my dorm, talking to my best guy friend Corey, and watching as the moon slowly disappeared.

When I was thinking about it later during classes, it reminded me of an old song that I feel all to closely relates to my life. I haven't decided if it relates to now, or in the recent past. Or maybe, it relates to my near future. But it definitely speaks to me about myself.

"Every now and then I get a little bit lonely... I get a little bit tired of listening to the sound of my tears ...I get a little bit restless, and I dream of something wild ...I get a little bit helpless, and I'm lying like a child in your arms ...Your love is like a shadow on me all of the time. I don't know what to do and I'm always in the dark. We're living in a powder keg and giving off sparks. ...Once upon a time I was falling in love, but now I'm only falling apart. There's nothing I can do. ...Once upon a time there was light in my life, but now there's only love in the dark. Nothing I can say. A total eclipse of the heart. " - Bonnie Tyler, "Total Eclipse of the Heart"

Relationships for the past two years have made me feel as if we were just gunpowder waiting to explode. Since I rid myself of them this summer, my mind has been far from relationships while I've been in school these past couple weeks. It's like I've flipped a switch and turned off my heart, so instead my mind could rapidly use the stored energy. I trust God in the darkness, in the singleness, but I'm carefully reassuring that there aren't any lightswitches I'm responsible for flipping back on.