Wonder-lust

As I was painting my toenails this morning I was thinking about how I used to be so much better acquainted with my toes. But now as I've grown and gotten older there's been some distance put between us, and my familiarity of each toe and boney angle has become more and more fuzzy. I used to know my feet just as well as I know the back of my hand.

That whole thought trailed me along to the thought of how I used to be so much better acquainted with the ground. From taking naps on the living room floor to rolling around in the grass, the ground and I were just a lot closer to each other.

I still have such a clear image from the house I grew up in in Houston, of me laying on my bedroom floor, face pressed into the nappy blue carpet. Oh, it smelled dreadful. I can still remember it clearly, as if my nose were buried in it now. It smelled like foot, nail polish remover and synthetic fiber. I remember just staring intently at the fibers of the carpet, with my little freckled face resting on the smelly blue abyss. I had no idea that I was making a memory that would come back to visit me 10+ years later. I was just taking in the details of my surroundings.

I feel as I've gotten older my wonder-lust for the tiny details of life have dissipated and I've moved on to bigger things. It's as though my perception of the tiny details of earth have grown fuzzier, and only the big things are able to grab my attention now. I guess I always thought it would be the other way around, that as I got older my perception of the world would become clearer. That just isn't so. It seems the older I get the more confused I get. The older I get the more I have to remind myself to simplify. I actually have to try to be more childlike.

It makes sense that Jesus told us to be like little kids- our perception is much more tainted than theirs.

Let's all aspire to be little kids. Lost in wonder at even the tiniest details of life.

-Shalom y'all