As a Child

A beautiful day,
a car ride home,
and a ripe realization.

Glancing back at my baby asleep in the backseat, I suddenly realized what Jesus meant when he said that we were to be as the little children. 
He meant that our attitude was to simply be centered in His love and allow ourselves to feel worthy enough to take it!
Jesus told us to be childlike to enrich our lives with the experiential knowledge of being bathed in true and illuminating, life-changing love.  Love.

Life goes on, people get beat down and their sense of acceptance and love becomes dangerously warped.  We don't see ourselves as lovable, and therefore we don't live up to the dreams in our heart because we don't see ourselves as worthy enough to attain them. 

It's all about remaining....untainted.....believing that when he made us,...he made us purposefully and without ANY error.  And a child does that so effortlessly!
A child is willing to be indulgent...the center of the universe....the apple of their parents eye.  In fact, they expect...demand it.  They don't second-guess themselves.  They just simply mush into you when you tell them how wonderful they are.  They believe it with every cell and sinew in their being. 
And that is what Jesus wants from us. 
To believe what he tells us.  To have confidence in who he has made us.  To love the image we see in the mirror and to celebrate ourselves. 
We all deserve to be inundated with love, with kind words, with tender and warm embraces, and with a deep belief that we are beautiful and deserving enough to not only start accepting it, but to start expecting it as well!

Vertigo and Chinese Lanterns

The day after Christmas, while playing on the floor with my boys, I made a sudden right turn with my neck and next thing I knew the room was something out of an Alfred Hitchcock movie.  I couldn't tell up from down, left from right, what was stationary or what was moving.  It simultaneously felt as if I were on a teeter-totter and a boat.  The rocking...oh the rocking.  After a few moments of wicked vertigo, the room settled, but not quite as calmly as it should have been.  Somehow my ears were confused that I was sitting still.  So for the next few days...6 to be exact...I felt like I was seasick and if I even thought about laying flat or tipping my head even ever-so-slightly, to either side, the room would again take flight and whip me around like a balloon in high wind. 

It was unfortunate that the new year was nearing and I felt like I had a hangover of the worst kind...a permanent hangover.  I prayed a lot.  Felt sick a lot.  Cried a little.  Had tons of help from my husband and older son.  And although I was miserable, I tried really hard to be celebratory of the new year and all of the exciting things that await us.

As introduced by my brother-in-law and sister-in-law after their stay in Thailand, we brought in the new year by sending a paper lantern into the sky at midnight.  With it we sent all of our hopes, wishes, struggles, and gratitude.  We celebrated the God that we love and serve, the friendships we cherish, the beauty of the planet we dwell on, and we believed that as we sent our light forth, we could expectantly wait for that light to be brought back to us through the goodness of the year. 

Vertigo and all, it was a magical moment to see our lives...on fire and upward bound!