A Child Again

"I'll give you three hints to where we are going," I told my sister as we buckled up and I backed out of the driveway.

"Okay!" She agreed enthusiastically.

"First, we've been there before, but never just the two of us." I paused for a moment to let her think. "Also, it is a place that mom wouldn't take us when we asked her to." I added this statement with a sparkle in my eye, knowing that it would spark my little sister's curiosity. "Finally," I added with a giggle, "We will probably be the oldest people there!"

She gave me this crazy look, and I could tell she was thinking, great...this is going to be embarrassing.

"Don't get me wrong. You are gonna love it!" I threw in that last comment and then zipped my lips or else I would ruin the surprise.

"Chuck-e-cheese? The zoo?" She made a few guesses, but I shook my head every time. After a long silence, I heard her take a quick breath and yell out, "The Museum of Discovery!"

Since I am absolutely terrible at hiding my facial expressions, I couldn't play like she hadn't figured it out. So I gave her a huge smile and exclaimed, "You got it!"

All of the clues I gave her were completely true. We have a "funtastic friday" tradition where we spend some quality sister-sister time by doing something fun together. We've had many adventures, but we had never ventured to the museum. I had the idea to go to the museum for this funtastic friday because of an incident a few months ago. My sister and I had asked my mom if she would take us, but she just rolled her eyes and said, "You guys are WAY too old for that place." It was true. The Museum of Discovery was a place geared for young kids to play and experiement with some simple science while learning about the human body, the earth, gravity, and things like that. Since the museum is filled with fun hands-on experiements and demonstrations, there is no better place than to learn and have fun at the same time. Well, since my mom wouldn't take us, I would! And sure enough, we were the oldest kids there, but that didn't keep us from having fun.

During our two hour excursion, we visited every exhibit in the museum. We took our blood pressure and measured our reaction time in the health exhibit. We pretended like we were on TV in the technology section. We learned why the sky is blue and how a tornado forms. We held a baby mouse, saw the world's largest cockroaches, and played with magnets. I'm pretty sure that we touched every button and played every game that they had on display.

Every once in a while, it is great to be a kid again. If you had been there, you would have seen all the young parents with their toddlers and preschool kids...and then there was the college girl with her highschool sister, lifting the levers and flipping the switches on all the experiments, laughing and playing just like all the other children. Leave the complications of school, decisions, relationships, and reputation behind. No matter how old you are, you can still have fun by experiementing, discovering, and enjoying the simple things.

It reminds me that Christ calls us to have "faith like a child." It's a faith that is young, adventuresome, and simple at heart. It's a faith that forgets about being "grown up" and having it all together. It runs wild and laughs at all the wonderful things there are to discover in God's world. This faith notices the small and simple displays of God's goodness, and it is amazed by every fingerprint of God. It forgets about everything outside and devotes time to touch, laugh, and enjoy everything that God is and has done.

Later that evening, my sister thanked me for the time we spent being little girls together. I smiled, thanking God for my sister, our friendship, and the call to simple, childlike faith.