galilee sunrise

GALILEE SUNRISE IS LIKE NOTHING anybody could ever dream of, except God. I guess he decided to take the prettiest sunrise and put it down right here. When we first moved here, me, Daddy and Jesse Jr. would go to the sunrise service at Christ’s House Church, and we’d get up real early. I’d have my clothes laid out on my bed so I just had to wash up and get in them. Then I’d sit brushing my hair while it was still near dark out. We’d wait to the very last minute to wake Jesse Jr. because once he was awake, nobody could do anything except make sure he didn’t break something or break himself. I’d braid my hair down my back and wrap a colored elastic around the end. Daddy would be in the bathroom shaving and humming. Mostly he hummed Christian songs because that was mostly all he listened to.

Just a little while before we left, we’d get Jesse Jr. up, dress him and feed him something. Jesse Jr. shared a room with me, and his bed was in one corner, mine in the other. Aside from those two beds and a small rug, there wasn’t much to our room. Wasn’t much to our house. A couch and two chairs in the living room and a coffee table with a wobbly leg. A small TV connected up to a big satellite dish outside. Some pictures on the wall. A few pots and plates in the kitchen. We had a white tablecloth that I put out for birthdays and Thanksgiving. In the two closets in the living room, we had clothes—me and Jesse Jr.’s in one closet, Daddy’s in the other. My daddy would say, When our ship comes in, there won’t be enough closet space in this house, so I guess we’re gonna have to move to a mansion then. Then we’d be all dressed heading out to the car with that pretty sunrise looking down over us. Those mornings, as we drove quiet to church, it felt like we’d been given a whole new life. It was different, but it was ours, and in it, we had just about everything we needed—we had each other and God and that beautiful Galilee.