The Child
Can you touch the child you once were again?
The truth is the child never died.
The child became more complex in a world with many different organisms. The child saw itself reflected early on in its parents, or other figures in the lack thereof.
He adopted traits seen in others that seemed right, correct, or of himself to connect with the social fabric of his reality.
And in the adoption of such traits, finding and feeling his own for the first time, he also started to feel and adopt feelings of pain in others, along with their joys.
Most of the time that child will care about the feelings and perceptions others have, both for their own sake and his own sake.
To act on this once new feeling — empathy, he starts to grow up for better or for worse.
“Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it” (Proverbs 22:6, WEB) is written in the scriptures.
We certainly do carry on the things we were trained in as a child, more than just teachings, we carry aspirations others have for us, among many other things.
Children grow up and their inner aspects grow up with them, yet not in a healing and maturing sort of way quite often.
Most of us have some aspects that are stuck in painful events in the past… such is the taint of evil in this life.
Should the events be painful or forming enough, we often leave the younger aspects of ourselves in the place of mind where the memory remains, and that aspect cries… like a child that wants to be held.
But how do you soothe a child who has cried for you, perhaps for years, and this child knows a lot about you, and can challenge your newfound interest and compassion for it like no tomorrow?
It is fully able to give you the “terrible twos”, and this child is certainly and fully you, yet is still an aspect. It doesn’t have to control the story of how you are, and who you are.
The answer is start with Christ, and learn to be that same child before him.
The Spirit of Christ is a part of us and is close to all our aspects.
When we learn to lead and commune with him with all our heart, we learn to lead ourselves from a more centered place.
The crybabies, the ga-gas, the dribbling parts of our heart that are even too embarrassing for us to deal with sometimes — we are to come before him with them ALL.
Christ said if we don’t have faith as a child, we cannot enter (interact with) the kingdom of God, even though it is ever-present, and within us.
We must understand that he is our father, the cosmic father to all of us and the entire universe. He isn’t just able to handle us… the little sometimes immature children that we are — he also desires us to be before him openly and vulnerably, just like a child is before their parents.
Yes, we grow up and when we are big, we have a much greater ability to run and hide our weaknesses from others, even from ourselves.
Yet, the greatest thing that we fear is also our greatest need.
To have our hearts held by Father God, and to learn to hold ourselves in a similar way.
We love others because he loved us first.
We can and do love others like he loves us.
