~Perhaps that is the reason why I love the sunrise.~

The fire is burning in the fireplace tonight.  We are looking at a couple of days of cold temperatures ahead of us.  Burkburnett, Texas is not the only place on earth where it is not "flip flop" weather.  As a matter of fact, compared to the Dakotas and the northeastern part of the U.S., we are sitting pretty well right here in northern Texas.  

This morning I looked outside the school and noticed that the daylight was trying to break along the eastern horizon of the sky.  It was cold, very cold but I determined I would take a picture of it anyways.  I hurried out to take it without even putting my coat on.  I didn't want to miss it.  The photo was not the best one I have taken, yet still I considered it to be a beautiful one. It wasn't so much for the colors or even the clarity of the picture, but rather it was because of how it made me feel when I took it.

I love sunrises.
They make me very happy.

I have captured some of the very best sunrises in the middle of winter.  There is just something about the colors that are splayed across the sky when the temperature dances below freezing. They seem more vivid, more alive than they usually do. 

Some of my favorite ones have been taken in Colorado where Mike and I lived before we came here.  I would sit at the kitchen table, usually in the early morning hours, as I typed a blogpost.  From my vantage point, it was so easy to see the sky begin to lighten up and then the majestic display of its colors.  The Black Canyon of the Gunnison and old Silverjack Mountain provided the perfect  backdrop  for any picture that I managed to take.  

Ones like this one.

During the first 3 months or so of living in Colorado, I suffered some pretty serious homesickness.  It felt sad to live so far away from Kansas and my old home there.  I wasn't sure how I could make it.  Then one day a friend of mine, a dear young man who used to call me "teacher" back in Kansas, left me a message.  It was a message of hope to me and I always remembered it.  Bless his heart, he always calls me by the name he knew me to have when I was his teacher and he was my student.  I guess that shall always be the way.

He said,

"You know, Mrs. Miller take a look at the sky tonight.  The moon should be shining pretty brightly.  Just remember that everyone you miss will be looking up at that same moon from wherever they are.  Maybe then you won't feel so bad. Maybe then you won't miss us so much."

And that boy, now a very grown up adult, was right.

Perhaps that is the reason why I love the sunrise so very much.  Maybe it helps to remind me of the very precious people that I know and love who I left behind not only in Kansas, but in Colorado as well.  If I remember they see the same sunrise as I do,  then it doesn't seem like I am so far away from them at all.  That simple thought makes me happy.

I think I have enough sunrise pictures to make a picture book of them, but that won't deter me from taking others.  Every sunrise is different and no two people really see it the same anyways.  
Most folks see them with their eyes.
I see them with my heart.

             Sunrise in the Joshua Tree, near Twentynine Palms, California~summer '16