Yesterday was my birthday. 57 years of life. It struck me yet again how quickly the days goes by. I swear it was just yesterday that I was a kid, canoeing on Diamond Lake, walking my dog to the used book store to buy my Thor comics (which I collected until my senior year in high school, and which, when I sold my collection, financed my first year of college), gathering with my pseudo-cousins after church around the piano and singing. And, through all those years, it’s been there. Present in my mind and heart. Showing up in joy and sorrow and everything in-between.
Story.
Some of my earliest memories are of my parents reading me stories. I had a library card as soon as I was old enough, and would come home with as many books as I could hold. When I was in grade school, and then high school, my best friend and I wrote stories based on our favorite TV shows, incorporating ourselves into the shows as the brave heroines. (That old western “Alias Smith and Jones” was a favorite. Peter Duell…sigh…) Through my teen years I wrote poems about life and family and love. In college, my senior project was to write and translate (into French) a children’s book. And, of course, I journaled. Oh, those angst-filled college journals! And then God lead me into the Christian publishing world, where I got to be immersed in the beauty and craft of words all day long.
More and more I believe God plants the love of writing deep within the fabric of who we writers are. That it’s there from the moment we come to life in our mothers’ wombs. That He nurtures and refines it through our life experiences. That we write because He looked at us at the moment of conception and said to the heavenly hosts, “There. That one will tell My truths to a weary world. That one will use the beauty of words to shine My light into the darkness.”
Writers, no matter where you are in your craft, no matter where you are in your career, no matter what people around you are saying about the market or industry, know that you’re doing what you’re doing because God breathed that desire and creativity into your very soul.
And, if you’re so inclined, share this birthday present with me today: Take a moment and look back. Then answer the following:
“When did I first know I wanted to write?”
“How has writing been a part of my life?”
Blessings to you today!
