Day 7...A child's imagination

Walking by your slightly open bedroom door, I hear your happy voice come like a fragrance through the air.  You make your dolls talk to one another with such ease and joy, it makes me delighted upon the hearing.  When I take a moment to reflect though it kind of makes me uneasy.  Why can’t I do that anymore?  Honestly, I’m filled with envy.  Nothing against you, rather regret for what I’ve become.  I know it’s here, deep in a well within me.  I used to conjure up ideas like any other kid in my youth.  But now, whenever you ask me to play dolls with you, I honestly am hesitant and have to force my concentration, simply for the lack thereof.  It makes me sad to think of this lost art.  I am starved to find it again, that place where the stories flow and the pictures keep me in a magical trance where I’m transported to a far-away land.  I encourage you, I cultivate it in you whenever possible, I force myself to participate.  As the great writer, Brenda Ueland, puts it, “There is something necessary and life-giving about ‘creative work’ (forgive the term).  A state of excitement.  And it is like a faucet:  nothing comes unless you turn it on, and the more you turn it on, the more it comes.”  With that said, I want to turn that faucet on more.  Whether it’s playing with you, talking to God, being still, or writing.  We live on stories.  We live in the ultimate story by the grandest author.  We learn through parables.  I long for that childlike imagination.  I wish I could say to you, “Never grow up!” as if you should be like Peter Pan. (The truth is, I do tell you this all the time, but for completely different and selfish reasons!)  What I really mean is, I hope the imagination in you never gets confused or bogged down.  It’s key to understanding God, people, purpose.  In order to commune with God, hear His voice, glean from Scripture, seek and wonder at the mysteries of life, you have to cultivate that imagination you were born with.  If you’re like me, and you let the hurriedness of days steal it away from you, get still and idle again, enough to let the contemplation warm your heart like it once did when you were little.  It will be invaluable to you and possibly even the salvation of your soul.