Click, click, click. For a second I could imagine my shoes had smooth metal plates on the bottom. I wasn’t just a kid in a bright pink wind breaker whose mom curled her bangs for 1…2…3…4…5…6…7… seconds every morning. No, I was a princess dancing on clouds. The Lawrence Welch show promised that somewhere little girls could grow up with bouffant hairstyles and magical shoes that clicked faster than you could think. I scuffled my way along the rough pavement, a car blaring its outrageous horn. Blue and white platform-esque sneakers, that’s what my shoes really were. When my grandma bought them for me, I knew they were sinful. Only girls with not enough clothes who sang bad songs wore shoes like this. The mind of a 6-year old is a mysterious place.
On a dirty old street downtown I walked, unfamiliar with the weight of responsibility and care. A street where the asphalt is cracking and broken, and you can kick the little hunks of it down the sidewalk if you want. The buildings were all tall, and old, and had long broken windows up top. I bet they hadn’t been washed in years. I bet there would be dead flies in them, the kind you kill with your thumb when there’s not a flyswatter around.
There used to be a little bread shop downtown in my city. A black silhouette of a woman carrying a loaf of bread, Aunt Millie. Sometimes I thought she might be real, still breaking bread in the world. Maybe she was under a magical spell that kept her caught in the illuminate box. My mom would let us go in and pick something out. I would always get a bag of nearly expired powdered doughnuts, because you got the most doughnuts for the least amount of money ($0.33).
The first time I went to the theater, I was entranced with the magic of its golden lights, rich red velour carpeting, and intricate staging. One of the first shows I saw was about Helen Keller. During intermission, I went into the bathroom and decided I was Helen Keller too. For the next few minutes, I kept the ladies in the bathroom entertained by closing my eyes, mumbling jibberish, then grabbing and signing into people’s hands.
I always loved audition time at the local theater. I felt like an angel singing on a dimly lit stage with an old worn upright piano plunking out accompaniment. Auditions were always more fun than actual rehearsal later. At rehearsal you had to remember blocking, and lines, and choreography, and sometimes people would come in hung-over or high, and that usually made the director angry.
My daddy used to read to us every night. We’d all climb into mom and dad’s bed, and daddy would read about missionaries, kids who solved mysteries; his voice heightening the drama of the complicated plots. Sometimes, he’d read us the Bible. God was like the hero of my favorite fairy tales back then. I was in every story.
We didn’t need toys when I was little. Some cast off clothing or a ball and an empty parking lot were enough to keep me and my friends entertained for hours. It was always exciting right after a storm hit too, especially if it knocked a tree over. We’d collect the branches and make houses out of them. My friends and I were usually orphans, running away from a cantankerous overseer at the orphanage. We’d live off bruised apples from my neighbor’s tree, the leaves of Hostas making our fine dining china. I had a herd of imaginary horses, and also swans. I’d sit on the old swing set with chipped paint for hours just swinging and imagining that I was flying through a brightly colored shimmering sky away from the dark dragons that were in pursuit.
Imagination.
Sometimes I forget what it’s like to truly wonder. I wish I could see through my 6-year old eyes once again and bask in the mystery and adventure of the most commonplace event. I wish I could view God through that wonder. I wish for that innocence and for that awe, for that trust. Thinking about this reminded me of something my brother David wrote during his sophomore year at college.
“What has happened to the childlike amazement of wondering about the mystery of God, where even thinking about thinking about it confounds the mind? Of loving the Bible for its amazing stories, its powerful messages of hope and redemption, its amazing poetry, instead of only its theology?
We are so minuscule, so pitiful, so incompetent compared to God what hope can we ever have of grasping all of God's wonder, or even most of it? We are like children, infants when it comes to our understanding.
This is what I have been struggling with this evening as I've been reading through common stories in the bible - Gideon, David, the woman at the well. I too often trick myself into thinking I've got it together because I have my theology together, but that isn't it at all.
I need to become like a child."
"…unless you change and become like a little child, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven." -Jesus
