Young and Wild and Free

I dusted off the box before I carried it up from the basement. Contents of the box were unearthed as I dumped it onto the dining room table. It was an attempt to organize the boxes we would soon stack into a U-haul as we moved away from our house that held generations of memories.

Distracted with the task at hand, I got lost in a spread of old yearbooks, birthday cards, and hand-drawn stick figures with happy faces and big hair.

Somewhere buried in the box was an autobiography written by my eight-year-old self at the request of my third-grade teacher. Holding the document, I smiled as I read the list of details that seemed to matter greatly at the time it was written. A list of details about my cats, my favorite book, food, and even my favorite number.

But I stood and paused, blinking long and hard when I read one line seemingly lost in the middle.

"When I grow up I want to write books."

In my everyday life in the here and now, I am working on my first book, blogging my heart out, and you are reading it at this moment. So that probably doesn't come as much of a surprise to you as the reader. But here's the thing, it was a twenty-eight-year journey back to that desire.

Somewhere along the way, I forgot the creative desire God had placed in my heart. Somewhere in the minutes, hours, and days that form my past, I lost the inhibition to freely voice what I thought I was capable of without fear of criticism or disapproval.

Maybe I got lost in the starring roles of my life. In motherhood and my career.