Usually the place I find the most beauty is in Jesus shining through other people, specifically children. I’ve found that children have these particularly unique, beautiful spirits. I’ve met a lot of children like this but two stick out in my mind the most.

The first is a little girl I met this summer. I wasn’t her counselor but I saw her around camp so much and she was in the cabin that I was responsible for helping at their meal table and reading them bedtime stories. This little girl could light up any room. You couldn’t help but be happy anytime she was talking to you. I fell in love with her immediately because I saw her beautiful, joyful spirit. It wasn’t until later that week that I saw the other side of her spirit.

Behind this little girl’s dangerously beautiful smile was more hurt than any 10 year old should ever have to go through. I didn’t realize this until the very last night of camp when I found her on the cabin’s porch, sobbing.

“What’s wrong?” I asked her.

Her words came out in a tangled mess so I asked her again,

“What’s wrong?”

“I need to know if my mom is picking me up tomorrow,” she cried, “she has to pick me up tomorrow and they promised they would tell me.”

I learned so much about this little girl that night and I realized she was so beautiful.

She wasn’t beautiful because she was always happy or because she had it all together, she was beautiful because she was vulnerable, because she was real and because she was able to smile through the pain.

I think about that little girl often and when I do, I’m reminded of how beautiful the spirit of a little child is.

“And he said, ‘ I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.’” Matthew 18:3

The second child that I see this unique, beautiful spirit in is a little boy from a different but beautiful country. But I’ll talk about him tomorrow.

This post is part of a 31 day series. If you’d like to see the rest of the series, click the photo above.