I distinctly remember elementary school. I can tell you all of my teachers names, where their classrooms were, and how I spent a typical day. I loved everything about school, because when you´re a kid you don´t have the pressures and responsibility of adult life pressing down on you. The only thing weighing down your shoulders are the weight of your best friend as you try to help him across the monkey bars.
When I was a kid I stayed after school in the Extended Day Program until my mom could come and pick me up when she got off work. Some of my absolute best memories are from those short hours between 3-5 when school was over and it was nothing but recess time with all of my friends.
We would make up dances, practice cheerleading, play board games, pretend we were actresses, do arts of crafts... all the good things that childhood are made of. So for six years, I dreamed of being an actress, a singer, a painter, a musician... but that was before I grew up. When you´re a kid you can dream about being anything, because no adult wants to kill your imagination or your sense of hope... but as you grow, people become more blunt. You learn you´re not as talented as you thought you were, or that other people out there are just more talented. It´s funny that we call it "grow"ing up when all we really do is narrow life down. The world doesn´t get bigger as we do, it gets smaller, along with our options.
When I was a kid, I wanted to sing and dance and make art and do cheerleading, and for years I forgot about it, accepted that it couldn´t be done. Being here in Honduras, I´ve gotten to do all of those things. I teach cheerleading to the girls, so they can cheer the boys on during soccer games. I sing with the kids and teach them new songs and how to play piano and guitar. I make up art projects out of whatever materials I can find lying around. I dance with the girls for chapel and teach them new moves and different forms of dances. I act out stories and make up characters and their voices during reading time.
Everything that I ever wanted to be as a kid, I am.
Who says you can´t make all your dreams come true?
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LOVE IT! Summer, you're using it all for Him!! That's the way it's suppose to be!!! He gave you those gifts, talents, desires for a reason...Thank you, LORD! :)
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