“Mommy, can you read me this story?” My toddler asked as he dragged his new book across the room.
“Sure!” I exclaimed, hoisting him onto my lap.
As I read, I stopped and thought, “children’s books…humph…they are so complicatedly simple. I could NEVER write one of these!”
I know now that at that moment, God was smiling broadly. My ground was tilled and ready to receive another seed, and this seed would burst through into my very being.
2 Weeks Later…
“The only rule is that the story must begin with the words, ‘once upon a time,’” announced the facilitator from ArtReach (a group therapy training program which used creative arts to help soldiers heal from combat trauma).
I wrote the words at the top of my notebook paper -- once, upon, a, time.
After that, everything shifted. The words began to pour out of me. At one point, I uttered, “Slow down! I can’t write that fast!” I had to write one and two word notes in the margins to remember what to write two sentences from then.
The next and more profound realization was that many of the lines were the very words and phrases that seemed to "glow" before me as I read the Bible.
Returns the Ghost of Story-Time Past
The exercise ended and we group members were invited to read our stories. I was still wrestling with the notion of "my story" given how it was conceived and felt nervous to read; however, I read the lines and listened for the groups response.
“This you cannot be!” I heard them chuckle.
“You can and must be all of these things.” They gasped.
“Do not let others define what they did not create.” Their astonishment turned to moans of recognition.
I finished; they were so quiet. Eventually, the man to my left spoke, "Wow! You wrote that in twenty minutes?!”
“More like transcribed!” I thought.
The woman in front of me said, “I needed to hear that. It’s like you wrote that for me.”
The facilitator chimed in, “It reads like a really deep children’s book.”
“Children’s book?!” I chuckled as my mind flew back to holding my son and reading his new book while uttering the words, “I could never write one of these.”
God's smile was clear; the seeds' contents had blossomed within me. Little did I know, the last profound message of that day had yet to arrive; its carrier, one of my fellow group members.
READ Book Journey Part 3: Not of Me but Through Me
Copyright © My Forgotten Self Blog, 2014. All rights reserved
“Sure!” I exclaimed, hoisting him onto my lap.
As I read, I stopped and thought, “children’s books…humph…they are so complicatedly simple. I could NEVER write one of these!”
I know now that at that moment, God was smiling broadly. My ground was tilled and ready to receive another seed, and this seed would burst through into my very being.
2 Weeks Later…
“The only rule is that the story must begin with the words, ‘once upon a time,’” announced the facilitator from ArtReach (a group therapy training program which used creative arts to help soldiers heal from combat trauma).
I wrote the words at the top of my notebook paper -- once, upon, a, time.
After that, everything shifted. The words began to pour out of me. At one point, I uttered, “Slow down! I can’t write that fast!” I had to write one and two word notes in the margins to remember what to write two sentences from then.
The next and more profound realization was that many of the lines were the very words and phrases that seemed to "glow" before me as I read the Bible.
Returns the Ghost of Story-Time Past
The exercise ended and we group members were invited to read our stories. I was still wrestling with the notion of "my story" given how it was conceived and felt nervous to read; however, I read the lines and listened for the groups response.
“This you cannot be!” I heard them chuckle.
“You can and must be all of these things.” They gasped.
“Do not let others define what they did not create.” Their astonishment turned to moans of recognition.
I finished; they were so quiet. Eventually, the man to my left spoke, "Wow! You wrote that in twenty minutes?!”
“More like transcribed!” I thought.
The woman in front of me said, “I needed to hear that. It’s like you wrote that for me.”
The facilitator chimed in, “It reads like a really deep children’s book.”
“Children’s book?!” I chuckled as my mind flew back to holding my son and reading his new book while uttering the words, “I could never write one of these.”
God's smile was clear; the seeds' contents had blossomed within me. Little did I know, the last profound message of that day had yet to arrive; its carrier, one of my fellow group members.
READ Book Journey Part 3: Not of Me but Through Me
Copyright © My Forgotten Self Blog, 2014. All rights reserved
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