When I Grow Up, I Want To Be Just Like My Kids
I wonder how many times I’ve heard my boys say, “When I grow up, I want to be…” The answers change as they age and interests change. I’ve always engaged in the fun speculation of what their lives may look like one day.
Listening to my 2 older boys discussing life plans, it hit me. When I grow up, I want to be like my kids. I want to be like them.
I want:
- to have a seemingly blind faith
- to see the innate good in a person-to be able to look past our preconceived notions of a person and to see the good that is within them.
- to skip and hop as I go about my day because I’m not weighed down by the worry out to steal my joy and my moments
- to laugh more, to take life less seriously, to lighten up
- to be ok with good enough and strive less for unattainable perfection
- to care less about the clock and more about the moment
- to have an unguarded heart that cares less about the potential hurt and more about loving
- to forgive in an instant, to let go of hurts, to keep no record of wrongs, to truly understand how to forgive from the heart
- to say I’m sorry quickly…and mean it sincerely
- to be a peacemaker, to work to help friends in conflict with each other
- to give away my money freely because I haven’t come to believe in the lie that my security is tied to it-even if it means giving away the entire $20 received as a birthday gift just to see joy on the other person’s face
- to see, really see, the beauty in nature-to shriek at the sight of the sunrise rather than rushing by assuming we will see another like it
- to be captivated by the wind, how it blows through the trees, to stop and watch a caterpillar as if I’ve never seen it
- to ponder the awesomeness of God, how He created the birds to fly, how He created the ocean waves to tumble
- to ask a million questions a day because I’m truly in the moments trying to piece them all together
- to continue to be shocked by immorality, not numbed by a desensitized culture
You see, in a way, kids have a lot of it figured out. They just don’t realize it. They strive to be like us. I want to strive to be like them.
The next time my boys tell me what they want to be when they grow up, I will redirect them back to the heart. Instead of focusing on what profession they will have or how many children they will have, we will discuss the matters of the heart. We will focus on the areas that come naturally to them now and show them the beauty of those traits as an adult. We will discuss how their hearts hold so much of what we adults need and have lost.
But we can get it back. We can grow up to be like our kids.
