Apple Juice & Overalls--A Ramble

   World is covered by our trails,
   Scars we cover up with paint,
   Watch them preaching sour lies..
   I would rather see this world through the eyes of a child

  Darker times will come and go,
  Times you need to see her smile,
  And mother's hearts are warm and mild..
  I would rather feel this world through the skin of a child

  When a human strokes your skin,
  That is when you let them in,
  Let them in before they go,
  I would rather feel alive with a childlike soul...

                               ---Aurora

This past weekend I was at work early in the morning and found myself pretty bored, as usually happens when I'm working early. So I decided to have some apple juice for breakfast. I had only one dilemma though, the apple juice was warm from being in the pastry case. Gross, right? So I put it in the fridge for a few seconds, but quickly got tired of waiting and took a sip of my slightly warm apple juice.

It was one of those magical moments in life where you momentarily forget where you are and what is happening around you and it suddenly feels like you have been transported to another place altogether. Suddenly, I was no longer a responsible almost 18 year old at my paid by the hour job. I was seven and I was sitting in the back of our family's white mini van as we drove through the brown Arizona landscape, sipping from my juice box. The sunshine filtered through the big windows, I was bathed in its golden light and the anticipation of our trip. And I was thoroughly enjoying my slightly warm apple juice.

That moment, brief though it was, opened my eyes to something. The feeling of being a child is one of the best in all the world. The complex becomes simple, the anxiety becomes giddy anticipation. We are free. Free of inhibitions, insecurities, and innuendoes aggressively covering up how we really feel. Children come from such an honest place. If they are sad, they cry. If they are happy, they dance and sing and laugh and show us what their joy looks like.

Today as I wandered down to the park with my siblings wearing my recently purchased overalls, pink jacket and braids in my hair, I felt that sunshiny joy of a child to simply be alive on a beautiful spring day. And so I wanted to share what I learned: Sometimes, when you're almost 18 (or 38 or 85), you just need to go to the park and be a little kid for a while.

Childhood is the core of human nature. It is the foundation and the beginning to each life and it is where we learn the lessons and values we carry with us into the future. I think that there are plenty of lessons to be learned from children that adults could apply for a happier and wholer existence.

You can call me naive and ridiculous, but I know that sometimes getting in touch with that core inside of us is just what we need to remind us that the world is a happy place. It hasn't necessarily been easy for me to find it, and I know it is that way for many people. It's true that most of my childhood memories don't exactly line up with what I have described here. It happens. We get tainted by society and adults and expectations at young ages. But I'm confident that each one of us can go back to a time, maybe before we can even remember, when we were living out of our heart. Simple, unadulterated joy.

So go outside and dance in the sunshine, listen to a song that reminds you of being small, giggle uncontrollably with a little one, or just sing out of the joy and delight of your soul. Do what it is that makes you remember what it feels like to be alive. We are closer to God when we remember that we are just children in His sight, children that he loves eternally.

"I would rather feel alive with a childlike soul...."