Rough Sketches

I've been noticing little people a lot lately. They bring me comfort and peace by their mere presence.
As I waited for my counseling intake appointment, a little boy flew his toy airplane through the air next to me, used the ground as his airport, and looked up at me with his blue eyes from under my chair, playing peak-a-boo. I admired his calm, and I realized it was all going to be ok.
At the dentist, big brother was crying as I waited to get my teeth examined before being cleaned. Little brother kept turning around, smiling, and staring at me. Do people know how beautiful they are when they stare at something or someone they find beautiful? They light up like Christmas trees, and to me it is the most beautiful sight in all the world. I am still in awe when ever children look at me that way. I think it's sacred, this unconditional love children have not learned to squelch yet.
I biked to Fred Meyer's Friday to restock some supplies, and found a bench next to a table with a mom and son team selling overpriced popcorn for Cub Scouts camp. As I ate my sushi, a little girl in adorably oversized glasses came out of the building with her parents who were immediately solicited by the young man on a mission to please his mother and win his rightful place among the few, the proud, the camping. She just stopped and stared. The little girl wiggle came, that nervous laugh and shy smile that seems always to accompany the hope that maybe, just maybe he feels the same way too. And I wonder if we're all so obvious, or if the cool we think we develop as we get older is not a facade to something children don't have to be taught. Beautiful people are everywhere.
I look up at the stars one more time, and I wonder if it ever bothered him, Sarah's laughing as he took a journey towards a land he could not see for a child he had yet to hold. Abraham's story haunts me. What is it to live every day faithfully with a promise burning in your heart? I watch the children and I know they are a promise to me. He still is faithful to his word no matter how many times I think I can do it better, do it right. As Melody says, "God's A plan is still in motion. His heart is for you, toward you." Children are the embodiment of that hope. So in all these things, I won't lose heart. It's just a rough sketch of the beauty that is to come from the God who is, who was, and always will be faithful and true.