One of my twins always seems to have a new scrape or bump somewhere… all consequences from how he goes ALL IN on life.
So, of course, when he and I took a walk this weekend… he came home with a freshly scraped knee and hand. I had pointed a few yards ahead to some train tracks, and as he strained his eyes to see what I saw, he missed a crack in the sidewalk. Despite how unpleasant it looked, however, he never cried about any of it. He fell down, got back up, and just kept going. A moment after falling, in fact, I was pulling him back from leaning over the edge of a drainage system to get a better look at the blue dragonflies darting over the water.
Though I worry about what limb he might break first… I secretly admire him for how he just so easily goes all in on life.
This is the same child who also always says without hesitation and unapologetically “God” when I ask him jokingly “Who do you love the most?” His answer has never wavered over the course of a couple years of that question.
I so want to harness a little of him this morning.
I want to be able to say with strong confidence and no hesitation “God” to the question of whom I love the most. And I want to show that love in my actions. I also want to have the bravery and the fortitude to enter life a little like he does… full on, no matter the bumps and scraps that may come along the way.
It’s easy as an adult to rationalize or intellectualize choices – to weigh the pros and cons and consider thoughts and words and actions carefully. And, of course, there are many reasons for all of that – we can’t always act like children. But if we could, today, just harness a little of the “all in” that children have – maybe we can go all in on creating the world we want them to live in.
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“Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless. Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.” – Henri Nouwen
