"The one rule in this house is: Stop. Growing. Up."

Inevitably when one marries and is with child, you feel a sudden urge to revisit your childhood and to re-examine where it is you come from, who you are. To the "me" that existed even two months ago- I believe that prospect would have been daunting, chilling and down right terrifying to me. After all, my child hood was filled with so many things that no childhood should have had- BUT- I am rediscovering so many things that not only helped me survive, but helped me grow and become who I am today. And who I am today, I love. It is not the hardships that made me who I am- it is how I fought them.

The most enjoyable part of this visit to my younger years has inevitably been all the stories I read and all the tales I loved to be immersed in. Peter Pan, Robin Hood, The Sword and The Stone- all the old fables, the Pied Piper... all of the kids books I adored, like Stella Luna, The Bridge to Terrabithia, and Where the Wild Things Are. And why don't these things remain standard reading for us when we grow tall and become "responsible"? Why do they become so forgotten for so long? It seems a shame to me- they are so timeless and true. And they often have the best reminders of what it means to be one tiny person on this big world. It's so important to remember that you're tiny. And tiny is good. :)

My prayer for my own heart in this, is that I won't ever REALLY grow up. That I'll always be willing to suspend my senses, in honor of a greater story, for a larger than life day. (Kids can do this- without ever loosing their grip on reality. We try it- and we find out that we are scared to play, scared to pretend again. But how many live their lives pretending- and not in the fun way?)

I want my heart to grow softer with the years, not harder. For my mind to open wider and wider- until it's too wide to do much of anything but write story after story and do thing, after thing. I want to give joy, passion and wit to my children- so that their smiles and their hearts will be diminished in the face of very few things. I want to live logically and illogically- soundly and loudly, and leave my small withered hand print on the face of the earth before my time comes to leave it. It is not that I want to be remembered, it's that I want to be something worth remembering.

All the pieces of my heart and my head that have succome to abuse, to hurt and to pain- they will be destroyed and replaced. Replaced by God. Replaced by love. Replaced by timelessness, and virtue- and my ever longing desire to listen to Him, wherever He may will me. And the process is in progression.

Our God is not an old man, who is too tired to run, too tired to jump, who doesn't believe in flying anymore- He is the spark in the eye of a young boy, the laughter in the middle of a war- the unrocked peace in the presence of death.. He never ages. He never gives up on the dream- and He never stops believing in us. So neither shall I.


No matter what.