To Be a Kid Again

You’ve heard the old joke, right?  One guy asks another how he slept the night before.  “Like a baby,” says his friend.  “You mean you woke up wet, hungry, and crying every two hours?”

Sorry about that. Sometimes I just can’t resist.

I have been reminiscing about being a kid. Those were simple days without a care in the world; always being the center of the universe and always having someone to pick up after you.  What do you mean that was not how it was for you?  Ok, that’s not how it was for me, either.  In fact, some things about being a kid were tough.  We actually had to get up and walk across the room to change the channel on the TV.  And there were only three channels!

That still doesn’t sound too tough, does it? Well, I could mention that I had to wash the dishes and carry out the trash and do my chores and my homework before I could go play.  It still doesn’t sound like much of a challenge.  I guess it’s really all perspective.  The things that seemed tough at the time seem pretty tame compared to some of the challenges of grown up world.  And now that my own kids are in grown up world, and I’m dealing with mid-life challenges, those young adult challenges don’t look the same anymore.

But, there is something for me that hasn’t changed.  I still want to make my parents proud.  My parents divorced when I was seven years old.  That was a real challenge, but God has a way of turning bad situations into blessings (check out Romans 8:28) and I am blessed to still have two wonderful sets of parents that remain a huge part of my life.

I sing with the Singing Men of North CentralTexas.  Last night, we kicked off a new concert season at Coggin Avenue Baptist Church in Brownwood.  We had a great audience that pretty well packed the place.  But my attention kept going to one pew in the church.  On that row were my brother and his family, my wife, and both sets of my parents.

I am 50 years old and have been in front of crowds of various sizes in hundreds of venues in a dozen states and several countries over the past 35 years.  But the last time my parents heard me sing in a really great choir was 29 years ago.  I kept looking down at that pew last night to see if they were enjoying it.  I basked in every smile.  My throat tightened every time one of them wiped an eye.  I was a kid again. And I think they were enjoying hearing their “little boy” sing.

I am also thinking about what it means to be a child of God. Our lives matter so much to Him that He notices everything we do, say, think, feel, and even try.

Let’s make Him smile today.