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Taken from "Chicken Soup for the Woman's Soul"...  
 
I had one of those serendipitious moments a few weeks ago. I was in the bedroom changing one of the babies when our five-year old, Alyssa, came and plopped down beside me on the bed.  
 
"Mommy, what do you want to be when you grow up?" she asked.  
 
I assumed she was playing some little imaginary game, and so to play along I responded with, "H'mmmmm. I think I would like to be a mommy when I grow up."  
 
"You can't be that 'cause you already are one. What do you want to be?"  
 
"Okay, maybe I will be a pastor when I grow up," I answered a second time.  
 
"Mommy, no, you're already one of those!"  
 
"I'm sorry, honey," I said, "but I don't understand what I'm supposed to say then."  
 
"Mommy, just answer what you want to be when you grow up. You can be anything you want to be!"  
 
At that point I was so moved by the experience that I could not immediately respond, and Alyssa gave up on me and left the room.  
 
That experience - that tiny five-minute experience - touched a place deep within me. I was touched because in my daughter's young eyes, I could still be anything I wanted to be! My age, my present career, my five children, my husband, my bachelor's degree, my master's degree: none of that mattered. In her young eyes I could still dream dreams and reach for the stars. In her young eyes I could still be an astronaut of a piano player or even an opera singer, perhaps. In her young eyes I still had some growing to do and a lot of "being" left in my life.  
 
The real beauty in that encounter with my daughter was when I realized that in all her honesty and innocence, she would have asked the very same question of her grandparents and of her great-grandparent.  
 
It has been written, "The old woman I shall become will be quite different from the old woman I am now. Another I is beginning..."  
 
So...what do you want to be when you grow up?  
 
Rev. Teri Johnson