3/4 of my jobs since I turned 16 have involved children. I've always found it funny that I haven't inherited the desire to bare a child of my own yet I am always tied to children in so many areas of my life. It's an ongoing joke between me and God I think...maybe He's just trying to make a point.
Through out life, I have lost the desire to be a child...and now I long to return to that part of my life that was so sweet, innocent and short-lived.
When I was young I always complained about being a kid, about how I could not wait to grow up! ( like many children do, I'm sure)
I often was told I was a 7 year old with a 37 year old attitude and mind; an "old soul."
I loved hanging out with people older than me.
Most of my friends were the age of my older sister.
It's ironic and cruel how much I once longed to be where I am in life now and how much I now long to go back to when I wanted to do nothing but speed up the process of growing older.
A few summers back I worked at a daycare. I became attached to a few kids, but I was a teenager and rarely paid any attention to the heart of the kids or anything that they said to me.
I was only concerned with the clock.
Now that I am older (the old age of 22 ;) ) I pay much more attention. I listen to them. I watch them. I hold them. I understand them as much as I can.
I've always been a quiet observer in life. The one group I love to observe the most is children.
The way they act.
React.
Children have so much to say that we often do not pay attention to and it is often when we become the most disconnected from our inner child that we finally notice the lessons their kindred spirits may teach us.
A child can be hit in the face with a block, crying their eyes out to me one second and best friends with the very child who hit them in the FACE 5 minutes later.
A child can complain about their mother/father/friend/sibling like they can't STAND them when they walk through my doors and run into their arms with tears of relief and joy within the hour.
A child can sulk in time out and stick their tongue out at me one day, and draw me an "I love Mrs. Britney!" picture the very next afternoon.
Now, to act this way in adulthood would be a little to the extreme, but think about these lessons.
Often as an adult we trust little, gossip much, get angry much, forgive little, forget rarely and remember all too easily.
The girl at the office that looked at us cross-eyed once without meaning to is on our "She can go die" list for months, or perhaps forever if you're a grudge holder.
A friend that forgot to call, write, or cancelled on us stops being a priority in our life.
As a "grown-up," when we are scorned once, we may as well been scorned for life by an individual.
Often we find it difficult to know when to see through the eyes of adulthood yet love with the heart of a child.
Whoah.
That hit me hard too.
When you watch the innocence of a child's heart, yours will break.
I'm not talking about watching them like we typically do, making sure they don't do anything to kill themselves or others...
I'm talking about REALLY watching a child move, share, love, forgive.
I don't think God put a period where we often do.
I don't think God meant "Have child-like faith," and that's all it was.
I think God meant, " Take on your old innocence, your old trusting spirit, your old easily forgiving heart, your old sense of wonder and adventure in your walk with Me. Be a child again in heart, but walk in the growth you've taken hold of spiritually."
Sure, may be a stretch to those who have read the verse and just take it for what the text reads, but for me, that's what that verse now SCREAMS at me.
Every time I see a child slip into a joyful and merciful spirit towards another child that has ridiculed, hit, hurt, damaged them...God places His hand on my heart and reminds me of the girl I used to be.
Trusting easily.
Loving loudly.
Forgiving.
Forgetting the bad.
Letting the good triumph.
To be a child again is to LET LOVE WIN!
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