I was laying on my teal colored bed sheets with the fan running to help keep the heat of the jungle off my body and to let my sweat cool me down when I couldn't help but feel Our Good Good Father beam with tremendous outpouring love, joy, and profound pride in me as His daughter. I had about 40 minutes to catch a breath, and truthfully get some rest after having been going and going for I kid you not 14 days straight (because of our community's greatest event of the year - celebrating the Ecuadorian version of the Assumption of Mary which is La Cisne), when I decided to just lay down on my bed and simply breathe there sprawled out. I couldn't nap, I was restless. We don't have service nor do we have WiFi in our home. I wasn't in the mood to listen to music either considering the amount of noise that was already plaguing from outside the walls of our home (did I mention these festivities would take place at the Church in our community? Guess who shares walls with this very Church? Haha). So, there I was laying down and thinking of nothing until I glanced at all the photos hung up right on my wall next to me.
I couldn't help but stare and honestly be enamored by this photo of myself as a 5-year-old little girl. Kellie, that's so weird! Okay, when I type this out it totally sounds strange to be staring at myself as a little girl...but I swear my eyes were not my own. For some moments I felt like the Lord plucked out His own eyes and mine, and put His eyes right in place of where mine used to be.
At first, I saw myself at 5 years old beaming with joy to celebrate my neighbor's birthday and then found my heart growing with nostalgia of the "bubbliness" and craziness of who I was (and still am) when I grew up playing outside on our suburban palm tree filled streets in California. I also saw my little self beaming with love for others without having any idea of what that would look like 19 years later. My little self had no idea what joy would be gifted to me. And that's when I felt like I had fresher, more beautiful eyes. His eyes.
What I saw brought me to tears. It was a little girl, His little girl, who was a little girl then and always has been, beaming with the very same smile that carves defined cheekbones on each side and three lines of dimples, a cute square forehead and bright hair, strawberry colored hair that would be bright and beam no less than it did then as it would years to come in far away places. A daughter of His that would go out to the world to love, to hold, to kiss, to pray, to bless, to feed, to bury, to serve all other faces with all different kinds of cheeks, eyes, heights, beautiful shades of skin, and hands - callused, wrinkled, newborn and some that had already breathed their last. Those eyes saw someone incredibly familiar, someone that had always been present, but had been hidden for a very long time. All it took in a sense was a grab of that soft cloth in the glasses case to wipe the smudges of forgetfulness away and unbelieving of the Love of the Father and Love of the Blessed Mother.
He gave me His eyes, and what was ever more so incredible was remembering the soul of that little girl. The same soul that has always and will forever be. A soul that is crazy! Literally insane for Jesus, that all she would ever desire someday is to sit and kiss His feet...just to be near Him and hope that in showing others around the world they would fall in love for this same Prince. A soul that is crazy for adventure and a soul that had never burned so hard in trust of what should truthfully be ridiculous; like, for example (at this very same age) this little me couldn't find mom at the park (who was there but freaked out for 5 minutes) and without fear asked a different family to join theirs and go home with them instead.
In missions, it's hard to remember the joy and craziness of our little selves when we were 5 years old. In missions, you have days that you run out of of food in your mini-fridge and the last thing you want to do is make more eggs or eat rubbery-skin coated chicken (while also having tummy problems if ya know what I mean?!), let alone have the ability to hear the Lord's voice in prayer time. Some days in missions, for instance this season of ours that has just passed, where you're so dang busy with Ecuadorian festivities, fiestas, eating, hearing music blast until 5 in the morning or be woken up to fireworks at 4 in the morning, that you just go from one thing in the day that is important to minister to, to the next. Other days you miss a lot of people. You miss pie. You miss ovens and crock-pots (sorry I keep talking about food) and actually being able to make a meal that a human would even consider to be a meal by definition.
But then there are days like today, when you had forgotten of the beautiful encounter days ago of Jesus giving me His eyes to see my little self running into His arms - like a movie reel of my life over and over of all the times I desired His Love - and was reminded of all of it all over again when leading a Communion Service and reading the Gospel for the day in front of soon-to-be Amazonian Catechists. "Let the children come to me...the kingdom of God belongs to such as these" (Matthew 19:13-15).
Find your favorite photo of yourself when you were a kid. Why do you love it? What nostalgia does it bring? Do you feel your bones becoming flexible all over again as a child, able to bike all over town for those 7/11 Icees or to Target and back to get that Vanilla Bean Blended Coffee that made you sick to your stomach anyway? (Or is that too specific? Hahah! You get my point!) Whatever it is, however you were like when you were 5, your little self is still there...still thirsting for more of that Father, still ready to sprint in those arms for that Love that brings you to deeper Love in all things all over again.