Walking Without Fear

We've entered the mobile-baby stage, and as Ryan says, Cim has entered it head-first. Crawling hasn't caused any damage yet, but she's begun cruising around the furniture, and with that comes a lot of falls. But she doesn't seem to mind the bumps and bruises on her head. If she falls against the wooden chair, she'll let me hug her for maybe 20 seconds, then she's done crying and trying to climb the chair again.

I'm sure all parents are amazed at this fearlessness and determination. After all, how many adults do you know who would try something over and over, day after day, getting bump after bump after bump...

Oh wait, that's like life, isn't it?

Some people, I think, deal better with life's jostling than others. Sometimes we get hurt and we won't ever let our defenses down again, even if it means we stay curled up in a little ball inside ourselves, unwilling to live life. Something I've been working on since my sophomore year of college is not holding on to old walls that don't have a purpose anymore. I started letting down emotional defenses just in time to get engaged to my wonderful husband, and it was a big lesson for me on just how important it is to walk without fear.

I no longer have the problem of letting down defenses around guys that I like (so glad to be out of the "single" stage--I was really bad at it ((probably one of the world's most incompetent flirts)). But my emotional walls are not all gone. I find myself sometimes even throwing up spiritual walls--I didn't get a prayer answered the way I expected, or a trial hurt more than I thought it should, so now I don't want to pray for things that are important (stupid, I know, but occasionally it happens).

But really, even when I think something hurts SO BAD, it's like my daughter who has hit her head on the wooden chair. It hurts a lot--in the moment. I may need a hug. But in just a short time the pain is gone, and if I would just let go of the memory of the pain, I could start climbing again.

And then, like my daughter, I'll be able to stand on my feet and wave at the people who helped me back up, laughing and pounding my hand on the chair as if to say, "See, it really isn't so mean after all."