The further into adulthood I venture (I am now, ever so slightly, closer to 40 than 20) the more often I experience painful moments of nostalgia.  Often these episodes hit in the midst of a crazy week when waking and crashing back in bed hemorrhage together and I have no sense of my life outside a long list of to-dos. Then suddenly, while driving or working on my computer, I find myself with a gut wrenching ache to be 12 again.

I imagine that I am able to be transported back to my parent’s house on Old Coach to my long bedroom with the periwinkle blue framed skylights that I used to watch the moon through as I would fall asleep amidst the faded haze of my glow-in-the-dark star wall stickers. I long for the slumber parties where my girlfriends and I would stay up until three and then sleep until noon.  Full disclosure, my friends usually woke up about two hours before me and would be downstairs enjoying pink pancakes with chocolate chips, or some other Martha Stewart magazine worthy spread my mom prepared… The ability to sleep deeply is still a talent I possess, but it feels more often like a way of escaping instead of the blissful rest of when I was younger.

I  miss sitting on my inflatable chair (it had purple feathers inside-don’t be jealous) talking on my see-through wireless phone to my friends about the plans to go the mall, or a movie, that weekend. Life was so fun and sweet.

It isn’t that life isn’t fun now, but there is an awareness that I had no idea how carefree I really was.  They say you can’t go back, and that is true, but I deeply wrestle with the idea that I have lost that simplicity entirely. I understand Peter Pan so much better now. I don’t like it.

There is a scene in Garden State (that’s the last nail in the coffin to the question of if I am a Millennial) where the two protagonists are talking about the idea of home. Their bittersweet conclusion is that you ultimately are homesick for a place that doesn’t exist, and you simply create a new home with people who all long for that same feeling.  Maybe it is the longing that fuels all our efforts to safeguard our little life. The longing to go back that keeps driving us forward toward more security – more mature versions of inflatable chairs. We swap Claire’s for Pottery Barn in an effort to make our space cozy and comforting, but the exchange rate fails. Because the one thing that is different is that I was a child.

When I was a child I thought like a child..when I became an adult I put childish ways behind me… (1 Corinthians 13:11). My Savior says I must become like a child to enter the Kingdom, but I find myself like Nicodemus feeling totally baffled by how to accomplish that transformation. So I don’t have an answer tonight, but I do have a hope.  I have hope that if Christ says I must become like a child that somehow He can do the transforming. That He can transport me back to a place in my spirit where I was less driven to self-protect, less convinced the inflatable chair would make me happy, and instead free to simply enjoy my life- in the moment.

NOTE: If your bedroom was also decorated almost exclusively by items purchased at Claire’s you will enjoy the following Google image search: “90s inflatable chair + feathers”