let’s live our lives
barefoot

let’s live our lives like
small children,
children so precious that their simple presence
evokes tears in the eyes of the most
stoic father,
so precious that the image of them
snoring softly in their Thomas the Tank Engine bed
causes the stressed mother to smile a mile,
so precious that when one of them
pushes back the blonde, wispy hair of the other
the photographer can’t help but laughing as she
captures the moment

let’s live our lives like
children who are not afraid of nails and rocks
in the backyard, but who are
obsessed with finding that elusive
white grasshopper that their uncle
promised was there,
like children who endure countless foot baths every day
in the heat of summer but the pads still blister
and their feet still turn brown
but they don’t care,
like children who have just smelled a flower
for the first time, who have experienced the
sharp pain of a first bee sting,
like children who are in awe as a deer
peeks quizzically at them from above the bush,
tail twitching, eyes twinkling

let’s live our lives like
children who make up odd games that
they remember years later, a complicated one that involves
Patty Cake, jump rope, tag, and somehow
hop scotch and charades as well,
like children who wander away from their house
for many hours, exploring like Columbus,
drawing detailed maps of their small neighborhood,
beautiful crayon stick figures dotting the horizon,
like children who capture and dote on an assortment of
toads, grasshoppers, frogs, moths, and butterflies,
like a child who thinks the worst sin is to
**** an animal that the Lord has made

let’s live our lives like children, with a
loving and unwavering faith in the Savior,
with eyes unaltered by the
whips and thorns of life,
with minds unchanged by the
Judas Iscariot’s of this Earth

let’s live our lives like
small children

let’s live our lives
barefoot