Levi, my two-year-old, crawled up beside me while I was writing in my journal a few days ago.
He points to the place I’m writing. “Yours?” “You book?”
I nod. He scoots closer and watches as I write in my leather bound journal that I bought on a trip to Italy several years ago. I’m funny about my journals. They are like holy ground to me. It’s where I sort through emotions that I don’t have a name for. It is where I jot out ideas for scenes in my fiction projects. I write my prayers here, and my thanks to God. I even have certain pens in certain colors that I use for specific kinds of entries.
Levi is as patient as can be. Then he looks up at me with his huge brown eyes, and I know he wants to be a part of what I am doing. Something tugs in my heart. Something that tells me, “Let him write.”
I could have gotten a loose sheet of paper, but instead I ask him, “Do you want to write in Mommy’s book?”
A huge dimpled grin bursts across his face as he nods.
I turn to a blank page, and offer him the purple pen I had been writing with. He looks up at me again. “Blue one? My blue one?”
I go and get him a blue pen. His favorite color.
He scribbles away in my journal, chattering in happy half-intelligible two-year-old talk. And I’m swept up in the beauty of the moment. It looks like blue scribbles on a page, but it is important work in Levi’s eyes. And then, I see it through a new lens.
He wants to be close to me, doing what I am doing. He knows that my journal is something special to me, and he feels special by being made a part of it.
Suddenly, I am aware. I am the scribbler longing to write in God’s book of life. Not literally, of course. But I want the things I write, say, and do to be of eternal significance. To point people to Jesus. In comparison to who God is and what He does, I am a little scribbler making my mark. Sometimes it’s messy. Sometimes I go off the page. And like Levi sometimes I want to flip forward to a clean sheet, and God has to say, “Hold on. This is the place I gave you to write. Keep working right here. That next page is for me.” And sometimes He holds my hand and shows me how to shape the letters that I don’t know.
Even though what I offer is an imperfect and unschooled representation of who He is, He makes a place for me to create my art. He’s so good to me. He even allows me to use my favorite color pen to do the writing. He let’s me share who He is with others in ways that make my own heart happy. Reading and writing.
The world might look on and see scribble, but when Jesus looks at what I have done He sees precious. Jesus sees “precious” not because of the inherent value, but because He loves me. That is why my writing is to be treasured–because it is how I relate to Jesus.
I pray I always remember that this is why I write. Not because of who I am, but because of who He is.
And so over the top of Levi’s blue scribble, I wrote these words in my purple ink so that I would never forget.
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