Chocolate Smeared Glory

Big brown girly eyes peer into my baby boy's blues.  "We're always gonna be friends, you know.  Even though I'll always be smaller than you."  Sam looks at his pal Ellen and smiles, "Yep, Forever."

It's moments like this I want to capture and store in a big fat Mason jar.

Sam hands her a homemade chocolate chip cookie and I grin.  Ellen is the only individual on the face of the planet that he happily shares his food and toys with.  Call it selfish-third-born-syndrome, he simply doesn't freely give to just anyone.

She gladly takes the cookie, which has partly melted in the heat.  It's pure joy, watching her savor something so simple as the chocolate spreads from ear to ear.  I realize that she could care less that her face is a mess and that even more, she shouldn't care.

It hits me.  It hits me right there as I look at her face which Michelangelo might as well have painted in chocolate.

Since when do appearances consume us?  At what age do we start to care what others think?  Because, I am telling you there was nothing more beautiful than that little girl in all her chocolate smeared glory.

In that moment, I wanted to be her.  I wanted to go back to the day that I didn't care one single iota what others thought of me.  I wanted to eat my chocolate, not caring if others were judging me for eating chocolate.  I wanted to let it smear and dribble where it may, not caring what others thought of my appearance.  I wanted to smile from ear to ear, enjoying the simple things in life.

I wanted to be free again.

At what age is this freedom stripped away?  Is it when we start to notice boys?  Is it when we are bombarded with size zero models on every magazine cover and every television show?  Is it when a hurtful comment such as you have a large butt finally finds its intended mark?

I think God is telling me I can't be a good writer until I give up the entrapment of caring so much about what others think.  I am constantly wanting to write, but afraid I will hurt someone's feelings or afraid of what people might say about my stories.  It is fear and fear of rejection.

At what age did that start?

I think of Ellen's chocolate face and her freedom to simply be herself.  She was as much the sweet Ellen with the clean face as she was with the messed up face.  Despite the fact that in that moment, she may not have measured up to the world's standards of perfection, she didn't know or care.  She was a daughter, a sister, a friend.  She wasn't inwardly consumed with herself, but was simply being who God had created her to be.

And this is what my heart can't escape: What would a life like that look like?