A Different Kind of Faith

Chapter IV: Adventures in Innocence

I always thought it was odd that older people wanted to be younger, and that younger people wanted to be older. Why is it that we want to be what we are not and are never happy about our age. And that little voice in our heads, the little demon living inside that sounds like a manipulative Whoopie Goldberg. The devil on the shoulder as well as the angel on the other. Sometimes I feel as though I have to selves, one, a younger maybe second grade me, and an older, devilish rascal, senior in high school me. The younger me is innocent like the angel on my shoulder, she has bouncy pigtails and a little pink skirt, and a puppy dog shirt. Fairies are real and so is Santa Clause, anything can happen, and stuffed animals are the coolest thing. Or the older me, wearing all black, deceptive, maybe red ambré hair and studded clothes, the devil or demon on my other shoulder. Lies and red lipstick, "it's okay, it isn't hurting anyone", and "he deserved it" flow together in a black river.

The trick is to figure out which voice is which and who to listen to. Sometimes the demon might seem sweet and the angel is telling you to do something you now is right but you don't want to do it. These characters molded from my mind are who I'm afraid of leaving behind and who I'm afraid of becoming. I'm embarrassed sometimes that I have 41 Webkinz and my mom takes me to fairy gardens, and that dark figure is cool and inviting. Shouldn't I grow up and act like an adult? I can do whatever I want I'm a mature! The voices scream inside, this is what I want and who I want to be! But the little girl stands quietly in the corner with sad eyes. She holds the bunny from goodnight moon and wears a cotton duck nightgown. Sometimes you need to remember not to grow up to quickly and give that little girl or boy inside of you a little play time. They may seem distant and the race to adult hood is more exciting, but you must remember were them once.

While knowledge is considered power, at what cost? Soldiers have died finding small pieces of information. Were their lives worth less than a dictators favorite meal? Yes, I am exaggerating but I'm not that far of. However I'm not here to talk about decisions that are for other people to make, I'm here to talk about my own knowlage, sometimes at the cost of my innocence. I've been told by my friends that I'm the "most innocent" of all of us but what does innocence really mean? Am I the most naive, with the littlest knowledge of all, or do I just lack knowledge of adult things? Is innocence even a bad thing? But then again shouldn't we be aware of what's happening around us, wars, sexism, racism, and unfortunately more terrible things happening around us? Though sometimes you just need to take a step back from all the confusion, breath, and as they say, stop and smell the flowers.

To put it simply I'm afraid of losing the little girl who enjoys the simple things or at least the things that were simple and made her happy when she was little. Or maybe the world is going to fast. I still have dolls in my room as well as a collection of way over thirty Barbies. As I stated before I want to be an author so when I played with my best friends, at least the ones that grew up at my pace, I was the one who decided what we would pretend. This happened on a near daily basis but now, I haven't pretended, truly, with the wild creativity of my mind, in a year. This may not seem like that long but it is when you've only lived thirteen years. All of my innocence is sifting through my fingers like sand in an hourglass. It's dramatic, I know but now I've felt I'm thinking about things a never bothered to think about before, or at least I feel as though I'm forced to think about, for example, boyzzzzzzz (notice the excessive amount of zs).

Once again, what does this have to do with my faith journey? Well, because you totally asked, it has a little to do with maturing in shall we say your thought, without leaving your past selves behind.