Estimated reading time: 2 minutes:-)
My dad keeps a Google doc filled with all the silly things we used to say as kids.
Sometimes, I just surf that doc, flipping through funny memories and laughing. The way we used to talk when we were kids was hilarious!
One of my favorite personal quotes was as follows:
“Why check out books from the library when you can write them yourself?”
February 2, 2010 ( I was 7:-)
I’ve always loved telling stories. Since I was a little kid, it has always been a part of who I am. I know a lot of people who don’t know what they’re going to do in the future, where God is leading them, but I have been blessed with an otherworldly clarity. I know a lot of friends who are confused about direction.
I remember as a kid, staring at my bookshelf in my room, stocked with volumes by Cressida Cowell and C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien and Cornilia Funke. I would imagine my book next to their names, my name paralleled with their own. It seemed like a distant fantasy, as fantastic as riding dragons or speaking with pirates.
Only ten years have gone by.
And now my dreams are coming true. My book is getting published and I can hold it in my hands. My blood, sweat, and tears have paid off after five long years of hard work.
But I think part of me is scared I will lose that childlike dreaminess, that innocent wonder, as I progress along my author journey.
I’m almost eighteen. My life is changing so fast. And I feel like I’m just watching it fly by, reaching out my hands to grasp a memory, a piece of time, a pause in the chaos of life. But it is too slippery and it keeps flying by and I can’t stop it.
My life right now looks more like business and marketing than it does writing. And I am happy, thrilled even, to market my new book. But I haven’t felt that adrenaline rush, that high I get when I step into the worlds I’ve created the same way in business.
Here’s the truth: I want to stay a kid forever.
Is that possible? To preserve a wild imagination in a world like this?
I think yes. I’m optimistic.
There is a part of me that wishes everyone was more childlike. More imaginative. It shouldn’t be shameful to daydream again, tell stories to yourself, sing like a child. We are children of God, are we not?
Matthew 18:3 says, “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Children need their parents. And we need God.
Children trust their parents without question. Without a second thought. We are called to do the same.
I’m growing up. I don’t want to, but it’s happening, and I can’t stop it. And I know as I get older, the time will only fly by faster.
But I don’t ever want to stop being a child. I will always be a child of God. I will always be child at heart. I don’t think it is a bad thing. And I wish for you the same.