When I was young, I would always go to the park and sit on the swings, because my older

sisters did, and I wanted to be a big kid too. I would sit and she would push, as my legs swayed

and tucked, and I would ascend higher and higher, til my stomach churned and I asked her to

stop. I was scared I'd go flying away, or that I'd go all around the swing set. I was so sure I was

flying, so sure that I was free, so sure that in the end my sister would catch me. When I was

young, the car wash, wasn't a car being washed, it was a portal. I saw a bright vibrant world of

neon blue and crimson red and tentacles clawing to get in. I thought for sure I was lucky to get

back to my world in one piece. I was so enthralled at the simplest things and so comfortable not

knowing what it was I was experiencing. And yet, when I return to that park, and I sit in the sane

swing, my feet never leave the ground. I never fly, I'm just grounded, and I trust myself to stop

whatever swing I get into. When I go through a car wash now, I know it's nothing but a waste of

twelve dollars, and I'm more enthralled by my own laziness not to hand wash the car rather than

the process. However they're are still times where, I will sit on a swing, and remember when I

was that seven year d transitioning from footies to the pants and shirts. At every transition, I

found an ever reaching world to be enthralled by. God never meant for me to be complacent in

my life. To be so used to the landscape I see, that I cease to see the beauty in creation. My

swings now are the relationships I build, the teams I lead, the interviews m, I go to, the people I

meet, and my Catholic Faith which is more splendid in awe and beauty than all the other things

in my life. Whether I am seven, seventeen, or seventy, I will always have swings, and car

washes, to make me free, to make me scared. And to make me safe.