A couple of weeks ago, Soraya, Baba and I took a trip the Grand Canyon. I’ve written about Soraya’s wanderlust before, and about my lack of it, but I’m grateful to her for inviting me along on the short trips. For dropping an itinerary at my feet that is too tempting to resist and dragging me along to see the world’s wonders.

We were in and out in 4 days: landing in Phoenix, driving north through Arizona, staring at this wondrous, cavernous beauty, and driving south again through the Red Rock region of Sedona. Every moment seemed tinged with anticipation, both good and bad. Here we were, in America mere days before the election, before the re-ascendance of Donald Trump. Here we were, so close to a cliff’s edge, both literally and figuratively.

The South Rim of the Grand Canyon is wider and deeper than it has any business being. You expect to see the whole thing with your eyes. And then you get there and you realize that you can see maybe 2% of it at any given time. And the 2% you’re seeing is as far as your mind can fathom, and even that is overwhelming.

Just looking down is enough to feel as though you’ll tumble. Enough to feel as though there is no end to the drop.

And yet, it is breathtakingly beautiful. It is mindboggling and mind blowing. It is perspective shifting.

Last Wednesday, after being home for a few days, D and I went to a presentation by a Canadian astronaut and he spoke about the wild shift in perspective you get, looking down at Earth from the vast emptiness of space. I think the next closest thing to that is looking into the Grand Canyon. Perspective. We are so small. We are so small so let’s not sweat the small stuff.

And yet.

On our last morning there, Soraya and I saw the sunrise over the eastern-most point of the South Rim. The earth around us there was desert-like, dusty and red. Everything felt precarious. If the magic of what we had seen the two previous days was wearing off, well then, that moment brought it all back.

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I try to remember the glory of God in these moments, to look at the Sun, a miracle, rising over the Canyon, a miracle, and let my remembrances accompany my awe.

So I was watching the sun come up, and praying, and taking photo after photo, when I noticed that the glove of my right hand was missing, had fallen away from me some time between the shuttle bus we’d gotten off and the craggy walk we’d taken to the cliff’s edge.

It’s amazing how much the loss of a $10 Costco glove will affect your mood, even when you are witnessing a natural wonder, a miracle of creation. We are so small, not only in size but in perspective, in heart, in the things that might worry us. A perfectly replaceable glove.

“We can look for it,” Soraya said and started to walk around, so caring is she for her older sister.

“After,” I told her, “We’ll look for it after. We can’t get this sunrise back.”

And so we stood and we watched and we prayed, but now our utter focus had been pierced. The loss of a $10 Costco glove loomed over our moment, and the future of a Trump presidency, and the anxiety of flights home, and every other potential moment of fear or loss.

There is a verse in the Quran that says, Inna al-insaana khuliqa halu’a. This translates to verily, humanity was created anxious.

I think about this when I’m spiraling. When I’m in the middle of contemplating literal miracles and I’m derailed by the most ridiculous of things. When I’m overtaken by a sense of foreboding.

In the chapter in question, God goes on to talk of the healing power of prayer. How that anxiety can be mitigated. I think of Marcellus Williams and his last words, and I think he understood that.

I am a long way, but I am trying.

The sunrise, by the way, was glorious. The red rocks around Sedona where we drove later that day were incredible. My heart yo-yoed, falling to the pit of my stomach and rising to the opening in my throat as Baba drove the car along the switchback roads on the mountain in Oak Creek Canyon. We descended from 7000 feet to 4000 feet of elevation. Inna al-insaana khuliqa halu’a.

Earlier that morning, Soraya and I looked for the second glove as we walked back to the shuttle bus stop. We didn’t find it.

“Never mind,” I told her as another bus pulled in to the stop. If the cost of the sunrise over the Grand Canyon was a glove, I would pay that a hundred times over. And yet I still felt disappointed. By what? The loss of control. The smallest thing having gone wrong.

And then I noticed something black being held by a small rock on a larger boulder. My glove! I snatched it up quickly and we boarded, my heart buoyed.

“Oh good! So that was yours,” a man said. He’d been there on the cliff too.

“Thank you!” I told him and we sat down, flushed and energetic.

I’m not sure why this moment is cast in such prominent relief. Why the smallest thing having gone wrong is so crushing, and the smallest thing having gone right is such a boost. But here we are. Sweating the small stuff in spite of ourselves. Inna al-insaana khuliqa halu’a.

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