The sun streams through trees, dappling its light across the deck. Its brightness bathes my upturned face in warmth. I sigh, and the sound is a whisper of praise.

It is a perfect moment, and I drink it in slowly, savoring its pleasure.

Every day has at least one perfect moment.

But sometimes they are hard to see.

I’ve lost them at times, blinded by sleepless nights and deafened by screaming children. They have hidden behind clouds of sorrow and drowned in seas of tears. I’ve forgotten at times that the valley walk is arduous, and green pastures lie beyond my vision.

Maybe perfect moments are missed by perfect people.

Perhaps they are taught by less-than-flawless occasions.

When we brought our first baby home, we laid her on our bed. It was scary, a thing of life and death, responsibility and permanency. We stood back and gazed at her pink perfection and wondered, now what do we do? We were so unprepared, babies ourselves.

She cried without stopping. I was a nerve-wracked, shaking failure. Sleep-deprived, I grew up over burp rags and dirty diapers.

But when sudden silence came, I tiptoed to watch the shuddering rise and fall of her chest. I held my breath and wondered at the curves of her cheeks, marveled at her velvet soft ears and tiny red mouth. A perfect moment flooded my soul, powerful against the I-can’t-do-this-mommy-thing backdrop.

With eyelids thick and heavy, nursing battles raged. She cried, I cried. She thrashed and whimpered. Afraid of my own exhaustion, I rocked the wee hours of the morning in post partem shadows. Finally, the tiny smack of hungry sucking sounded, and it was sweet to my soul. Frustration and anxiety melted and for a few treasured minutes my inept arms held quiet warmth. Too often a perfect moment was lost for dread of its swift end.

Complaining is easier than cherishing. Perfect moments don’t last. They are missed easily, ignored mostly, and often overlooked entirely, because perfect is never complete.

Then one of those blurry days I read, “But about midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns of praise to God,” (Acts 16:25). It struck me that someone else had been up at midnight, and they undoubtedly weren’t in great shape either. Scripture says they had been beaten, thrown into prison and shackled. And in that state, they prayed and sang hymns of praise.

Funny how two men who lived so long ago, never birthed babies or managed mid-night nursing could affect me centuries later. But they did.

Because perfect moments aren’t really about perfection, they are about gratitude.

With Paul and Silas on my brain, I planned ahead for my night-time trysts with motherhood. As she nursed, I fingered tiny memory cards, Bible verses from long ago. I whispered them over her into the quiet, and in my emotional fog the verses whispered back to me.

It was so imperfect, but perfect moments are more recognizable when real life is a contrast.

My perfect moments evolved as our family grew, they took different shapes and sizes.

Children laughing.

A game of memory.

The tendril of my daughter’s hair.

Chocolate on cheeks.

The breeze whipping little skirts.

A cappuccino in the morning.

Peeling the skin off the doldrums of life to find something beautiful at the core, something to appreciate, is powerful. When I forget to look for a perfect moment in my day, I enjoy less. Those pieces of pleasure, layered one on top of another and fitted together make life bearable in the shadows of suffering when truly nothing is even close to perfect. They lighten daily tasks, fade the harshness of mistakes and imperfectness. They affirm God’s Sovereignty in every situation of life and re-focus our sight. Like tiny Sabbath rhythms, they rest and renew our souls.

So today, in a frenetic list of busyness, I turn my face toward the sun, stop, inhale and enjoy the fleeting moment.

And it is perfect.