The Usual Suspect

I walked back into the scene to collect prints. I ran them through my heart’s database. I found the Usual Suspect.

I’ve been asked, “Have you always wanted to be a writer?”

My answer? Yes, but I didn’t know it. In 2004 I woke up in the night after dreaming about a story. No, I wasn’t in a meadow and no he didn’t sparkle!

I wrote my first novel. Sent it off-got a rejection. Gave up. I was too busy anyway( yeah right, rejection stung!)But the pull to write never left.

In 2008, the burning desire sparked and I set out writing my second novel. One that came from a heart to minister. To glorify God and to write what He gave me. Unlike the story in 2004.

A Bible study I was doing asked the question, “What’s your passion? Reflect back and see how God sparked it. You’ll know what you are meant to do.” I sat there that early morning, before the sun was allowed to shine–sipping my coffee and I let the Lord take me to the early scenes of my life. 

He took me as far back as age 2. My favorite toy. A typewriter. I remember playing with that thing for years! 

In my kindergarten days, I remember stopping whatever I was doing to watch my favorite segment of Sesame Street. Yep, this was the one! That crazy typewriter putting together words!

I loved books. I loved listening to stories. One of my greatest memories comes from my great-grandmother telling me about Nancy and the Grandfather clock. I wish I would have written it down. I’ve forgotten some of the details.

In middle school, my mom brought home a typewriter. I don’t know if it belonged to someone in my family or why she brought it home, but I staked my claim on it(not that anyone else set their eyes on it). I spent hours pretending I was a famous journalist. I’d weave stories around why I was sitting at that typewriter!

In junior high, I would sit at the lunch tables, telling stories to my friends– about them and the boys they liked…how they ended up together, the conflict along the way. It was there on those white faux wooden benches I spun my first tales of romance. Junior high romance. What did I discover? I loved to tell a love story with love and mystery!

During the summer before I started highschool, when other girls were doing girly things, I found a floppy disk with a teach yourself how to type with two hands game. My brother thought I was an idiot, but he generally thought that anyway. In a day, I learned how to type with two hands and without looking. It came easily! It’s also, in my opinion,  the reason Ms. Nussbaum hated me Sophomore year. I already knew how to type, so I gave her a hard time. Who me? (this is me doing my villian laugh)

All the young years of my life, I thought I might want to be an actress. I made up stories and acted them out in my room. They always had mystery and romance involved. Now, I realize it wasn’t the acting that sparked my interest, it was the story behind it.

I sat in that chair, while God took me down memory lane–showing me His plan, woven into the day to day activities of my life and I cried. I cried at the fact He actually planned something for me. He planned something good. Something I love to do. Something I sure don’t deserve. (oh but for grace!) I wept because He’d been there and I didn’t even realize it.

As my tiny hands mashed the keys of that plastic typewriter, I believe He was grinning and nodding–knowing someday, in His time, He was going to replace that tiny toy for a laptop. He was going to fulfill all His purpose. He would accomplish what He began when I was knit in my mother’s womb.

I cried… because His fingerprints could be lifted off every area of my life.

“Many, O LORD my God, are Your wonderful works Which You have done; And Your thoughts toward us cannot be recounted to You in order; If I would declare and speak of them,they are more than can be numbered.” Psalm 40:5

Have you taken time to look back and lift the prints of God from the scenes in your life? What have you found? How did you know what it was you were meant to do?