Hello again, hiscosmicgoldfish.
I'll repost what I said earlier, even though I know you yourself have already read it:
YEC physicists have multiple theories for reconciling long-distance starlight with a young earth. I suggest going to
creation.com and searching for "John Hartnett" or "Russell Humphreys".
I bought Humphreys' book a while ago. I have a physics education so it was a good read. He's made some changes to his model since then, which can be found on the web site above.
Hartnett's model is more mathematically rigorous, but more difficult to follow, imo.
Each attempts to explain what we see with an "economy of miracles". That is, to marry a literalistic approach to Genesis 1 with as few miracles as necessary.
The results can be fascinating. I think Humphreys's idea is especially interesting because he's about as literal as a Christian can be regarding Genesis. So when Genesis 1 begins with water, the idea of which is repeated in 2 Peter 3, Humphreys' model begins with a ball of water big enough to contain the mass of the universe. It collapses on itself, ignites, and voilà, a kind of big bang emerges. Definitely outside-of-the-box stuff.
I'll suggest something else. We're all creationists, because scripture says "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth". We're just not all young earth creationists.