Seeking Sunshine: Re-learning Childlike Wonder
When I was growing up, judgmental aunts would tell me never to wear yellow because it clashed with my hair. In college, as I scoured my mom’s closet for oversized sweaters, I fell in love with a beautiful marigold jumper with a giant pocket at the hip. It had been one of her favorites. It fit me like a friend. I had always loved yellow, but I had to allow myself to love it.
I am a sunshine person. This was one of the biggest challenges with the quarantine setting in mid-March. Blessedly, Chicago spring came early. I tried to go out for a walk at least once a week. However, I was finishing my master’s degree, so time away from the computer was scarce.
It was June when I decided it: I would paint my dining space yellow. It was the perfect time! My roommate was moving out. I renewed the lease. I was graduating. I would start my first full-time job. I was moving all of my remaining things from my childhood home in California. Autumn was coming soon, and time in the sun was going to wither away.
It took a few tries to find the perfect color, but I did. It is pure joy in 730 square feet. (And it’s Benjamin Moore’s “Firefly,” for inquiring minds!)
This year has been traumatic. Feeling secure has been a challenge. I have been trying to do more things like this painting project, things that reconnect me with inner child joys. We lose the things we love as children too young. We stop playing with toys, reading the YA novels, singing the songs, making up games.
I might like the minimalist, greyscale look of that independent, local coffee shop (and admit it, you thought of one!), but every external revelation of my home is in technicolor. The board books with first words, the trinkets from my father’s military travels, the t-shirt quilts, and my mother’s spare chipped plates. My grandmother’s icon of Our Lady of Perpetual Help is astride Our Lady of Częstochowa from World Youth Day in Poland. The coffee table book is illustrated fairy tales.
Mary Williams, @creatingtolove.
It’s nothing like any apartment of any classmate of mine. Aristotle and Aquinas are overshadowed by Seuss and Snicket. Nevertheless, I’m not ashamed of the comfort I am giving the small me inside. I am not afraid to gift myself the joy of little children, which God Himself calls us back to. [Matth. 18:3]
When was the last time you sat in the presence of your imagination? Do you let yourself read simple words? What colors do you surround yourself with? What might soothing yourself like you would soothe a child look like? As we hunker down for the cold, what might you rediscover to light up your space? What do you need to give yourself childlike permission to love?
Relearning childlike wonder is good for our relationship with the Lord. It reminds us how to be present and focused on what’s around us. It allows us to rediscover hope in the possibilities of the future. It molds our heart towards dependence on those secure constants, primarily God! In this culture and time when there is immense pressure to make sense of things on our own through sheer will-power and intellect, resting in the Lord’s parental care of us, and thinking imaginatively about what our world could look like, is more important than ever. It can start as simply as bringing childhood light into your personal spaces, to stock up on sunshine just in time for fall.
Meet Madison Chastain
Depending on the availability of an evening Mass, you will find Madison in either a pew or a boxing gym on Sunday mornings. Having just graduated with her MA in theology and ethics from The University of Chicago, Madison works full-time introducing teens to the Catholic intellectual tradition, and part time in vocational support for those caring for adults with intellectual disabilities. She loves reading, oil pastels, talking about women's reproductive health, and she makes a mean beer bread. You can find Madison on Instagram @maddsienicole, and find more of her writing at theologyforeverybody.com.