“I’m not getting bigger!”
Jonah hit a growth spurt over the summer and is now 5’1”.
Just don’t tell him that. He will scold you and hunch over pretending to be smaller again.
Change is not easy for most people but especially hard for an Ausome kiddo.
On one hand, he wants to be in middle school. He wants to be with the older kids. He wants to be included in all of the things he wasn’t able to do because he was “too young” or “too little.”
But on the other hand, he doesn’t want to physically change to do all of that. He wants to stay a child but be able to do all the “big kid” activities.
He wants to “get older” without actually “growing up.”
I can relate. There’s a part of me that wants to go back to the care-free time of tree-houses and bike-riding with friends and Saturday morning cartoons.
Sometimes I long for those days. So many fond memories. Friends coming and going and moving away, until eventually there were only a few left.
I don’t know if we ever knew when we had reached “the end of childhood.” I don’t know if we would have ever recognized or even acknowledged it.
I don’t think it’s quite the same for Jonah, but sometimes I wonder. He’s seen plenty of “growing out of childhood ” movies like Andy in “Toy Story.”
I wonder if he sees that as “growing up.”
I wonder if he just doesn’t want “what happened to Andy” to happen to him. When your interests start to change and you stop building forts or playing with toys.
“Growing up.”
We all gotta do it, kiddo.
Whether we want to or not, we all have to get older. We all have to move forward. And sometimes that means we have to leave the past behind us, even when it’s hard.
Even when it’s our childhood.
But I promise you this. Through every new transition. Every new school or new grade. Every graduation. Every made friend or lost friend. Every milestone. Every inch stone.
Every step you take in this journey we call life.
I’ll be with you every step of the way.
And as Grandma Nita used to tell me, “Jesus loves you and so do I.”
You’re gonna move mountains kid.
I’m so proud of you!
#ausome