How to love like a child......

I'm having a mom moment right now. I was going through boxes to find some pictures I was looking for to do some scrapbooking and came across a Mother's Day gift from May 2008 given to me by Austin, my 10 year-old who was 7 at the time. It always gives my heart a 'warm fuzzy' when I find these things. I still have things in boxes from our move to our house last year. But finding this today made me think about what makes a child love so freely. It's a picture that he colored of a little boy giving his mom flowers and this is what it says......

                                           Mom,
                                    I Love You Because...

You do stuff for me and your my only Mom. And you also take me on vacation. I love You bigger than the Moon. Your the best mom ever! (i love how he uses an exclamation point here :) Your also the nicest mom ever! (again, the exclamation point) Thank you for keeping this.

                                        Love, Austin

Wow, do kids really know how to make your heart flutter! How is it that they know how to love so Big, and so Deep and so Unconditional?  And how is it that as we grow older that innocence that made us love so Big, and so Deep and so Unconditional slowly fades? We start to get older, wiser (so we think) and start to become selfish and jaded. We start to knock off points when somebody does something we don't like. Oh, she didn't say hi to me, she's not my friend anymore.  He didn't say how pretty I looked today...I'm not kissing him goodnight.  Pretty soon the Love just goes away and we're left alone with our grudges. There's no one to laugh with or to kiss goodnight.  How is that kids still love us when we scold them, or don't buy them the toy they want, or make them go to bed early? They never stay mad too long, they still laugh with us....they still kiss us goodnight... they tell us "I love You bigger than the Moon." I want to remember what it's like to love so Big, and so Deep and so Unconditional. How to love with an Exclamation point! How to love like a child......