Matthew 19:14 (one of my favorites!)

"Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."

My whole life I have been fascinated by kids. I love interacting with them, playing with them, talking with them, and sometimes just observing them. Throughout my life I have always been involved with kids, whether through teaching Sunday school, being a nanny, and today working with them everyday as a nurse. The above verse has always been close to my heart and one that I have found myself saying over and over again more recently. I believe that this verse is a reminder to us adults to have a childlike faith, and I will talk about that right after these examples.
Have you ever noticed as adults many of us surround ourselves with quotes such as "Everyday is a gift" or, "Dance as if no one were watching". How about "Laugh often" or "Love much". There are a thousand inspirational quotes out there, but what I realized is if you take 5 minutes to watch a kid you would see they perfect so many of those quotes daily. Have you ever watched a 4 year old girl run? Sometimes I think their feet don't even touch the ground. My favorite is making eye contact with a little kid in the grocery store. They look away at first but if they look back and you are still watching them they almost always break into a huge smile, and then you can have an impromptu hide-and-seek game with them right then and there.
I was watching home videos of me as a little kid a while ago. As a kid I would do ANYTHING to impress my dad. I was 7 or 8 and he had me practicing my diving into the pool. On an ordinary day this wouldn't seem crazy, however this particular day was 50 degrees and people commenting on "the little girl swimming in the pool" were saying the water wasn't much over 50 degrees either. If you go back years before that day when I was learning to swim, you would see that I would have never been doing that if my dad wasn't there to catch me when I jumped into the pool, promising he wouldn't let my face get wet. What I am getting at is trust. As a kid I trusted my dad with everything in me, and would do anything he asked of me. I knew my dad would never let me be put in harms way. To this day I trust my dad with so many things. Why do I trust him? I think it goes back farther than I can even recall, but it certainly stems from my childhood.
Now onto how I am trying to live with a "childlike faith". Over the last few weeks, and months I have found myself somewhat stuck. I couldn't put my finger on it until just last week. You see just over a year ago I thought I had it all figured out. Dream job, great friends, the boyfriend who was supposedly "the one". In one day everything came crashing down on me and my life as I knew it changed forever. Not only did I loose the perception I had of the great life in store, I lost friends who didn't have the courage to stand up for me and recognize how much I was hurting. Looking back now, that one day saved my life and was a true communication from God. I trusted back then within minutes that God knew what he was doing in my life and I gave over complete control to him. God has blessed me so much. I have new friends (yay for LIFEgroup!) who I connect with on a truly special level. I have a new appreciation for my job, so... what might you ask is missing? Trust. I say I trust God, but those are just words unless you put them into action. With trust in God there should not be fear for the future, no thought for tomorrow. Last week I was freaking out about what the future holds. Am I supposed to be a missionary? Will I ever get married and have the family I have always dreamed of? When is my life going to start? I read a book recently and one of the lines was talking about the future saying when we look to the future we rarely see God there in it. Ding Ding!! That was the moment I stopped and re-evaluated my faith.
Trust is not easy. As humans we are so tainted by the world and generally grow up and learn not to trust anyone or anything. For me personally I have always been overly trusting in relationships that didn't deserve trust, therefore getting burned a lot. For me I have to go back and remember standing at the edge of that pool and making the decision to trust my dad...and then making the leap into his arms. Instead, this time its God. Everyday I can wake up and consciously decide to trust God. If we put our faith in God he will never betray it. He will never forsake us. If we worry about tomorrow we can miss what today may bring. I know God has plans for me, and now I also understand how to trust him with my whole heart, just as a child would, after all I am of his children.