Racing to the swings

What a bust. I used to LOVE to swing...at recess I would race as fast as I could to try and get a swing so i could spend all 20 minutes just sitting... feeling the wind in my face going higher and higher and just breathing in life. I would make up stories about where I was flying, and fill my heart and mind with inspiration, hope, and imagination. I wasn't scared I was going to fall. I felt the opposite. I felt like I could do anything, go anywhere, and I knew that I was safe even though I was flying through the air at an alarming rate and at what seemed to me to be great heights. I had faith that the swing would catch me on the way down, that the chains were strong. After a good swing I would leave with more faith in myself, the world, and even in God.

Tonight while I was waiting for my youth ministry class to start, I decided to go play on the playground. Where is the first place I go?...the swings..no contest. However, the experience I have on swings now is drastically different from that when I was in grade school. Swings now make me dizzy and sick to my stomach really fast. I don't know what that means, but I do know that swings no longer hold the meaning they once did. As I sat there sitting in the swing I couldn't swing in because it made me feel sick, I started thinking that like with many things, the swings didn't change, I did. My body grew to where it hurt to sit too long in a swing, I didn't get the same thrill pumping my legs as hard as i could to go higher and higher, and my body didn't handle all that motion the same way it used to. I'm okay with that.

What I'm not okay with is getting rid of swinging altogether. I started thinking about what would be equivalent to my "swing" now. When did we stop swinging? Why did we stop swinging? And we wonder why kids are so carefree. What if we took 15 to 20 minutes twice a day to run somewhere so we could just sit? To feel the wind on our face just breathe in life? To fill our hearts and minds with inspiration, hope, and imagination? I'm not talking about watching a show or getting on facebook. I'm talking about going somewhere that we leave everything behind, and just breathe in life for awhile. It's about time we started racing to the swings again.

New goal: Have faith like a child...on a swing.