Here's to Being a Naked Cowboy in 2012!

Early evening in our house can be a bit like juggling scoops of ice cream - just quit while you're ahead because a meltdown is coming anyway!  Between trying to get dinner on the table for four children with very different appetites, cleaning up the aftermath of spilled or thrown or spit food, rounding up the cowboys for a wash down, bathing baby girl without one of the cowboys knocking her over while they are enroute to their nighttime snack or an ever-important HotWheels race, and finally bedtimes which vary with each child and from night to night depending on the day's activities, it's no wonder I'm usually dizzy by the time I crawl into bed around midnight each night.

The other night, however, as I was bathing baby girl, I heard my two year old cowboy coming down the hallway (as it's hard not to hear him coming), so I turned to look.  What I saw was a beautiful, just-bathed boy with blonde curly hair bouncing down the hallway - buck naked!  He was just bee bopping along without a care in the world as if everybody walks with ease around the house in their birthday suits.  It gave me such a laugh and I thought, "It doesn't get better than this!"  I had flashbacks of my six year old running down the hallway in nothing but cowboy boots when he was two, and of my fifteen year old greeting guests at the door in nothing but cowboy boots when he was two!

This is LIFE!  In my sleep-deprived daily haze, I know this time will pass and I will miss it.  Small children are like naked little souls for us to learn from. They haven't yet put on their sweaters to protect themselves from life's cold shoulders or their suits of armor to protect themselves from life's piercing moments.  We can be more like them though and shed our heavy outerwear and armor.  It's difficult to be a light to the world with those things covering us up.  This new year, I will try to strip myself from things that keep me from showing God's light.

It's hard to bare ourselves for the world to see, but I kind of feel like everyone is just walking around with masks on - the masks they want us to see - not their naked faces, bodies, and souls that God created.  It's time to take all that junk off that's been weighing us down and be who God created us to be. There's no time like the present, so go be like my naked little cowboys and take the bull by the horns.  Go make 2012 the best year of your life by exposing your God-given talents.  Here's to the New Year!

Happy trails...