One night when I was about 9 I got to dress my curly-red-headed little sister for bed. I felt so grown up. She was a mischievous stinker who could get away with murder because we adored her. That evening, my mom handed me a fat pink book with a lock and key. “What’s this?” I asked.

“A diary! To write in.”

I’d heard of such things but didn’t dream I was old enough to own one. “What do I write about?” “Oh, anything you want – like what you did today maybe.”

So in my very first journal entry ever I wrote about receiving a diary and about changing Susannah’s diaper. Mom had no idea what she had begun. Long years and a box full of journals later, my favorite feeling is still opening a blank journal and writing the first words on the page. Nothing thrills me like that. Not even rich dark chocolate, though it comes close.

Psalm 139:13 says
You made all the delicate, inner parts of my body
   and knit me together in my mother’s womb.
Thank you for making me so wonderfully complex!
   Your workmanship is marvelous—how well I know it.

God knit into the pattern of my personality this passion to communicate – talking or writing. I’ve never really cared. Just get words out there somehow, regardless of who even sees them.

I still feel the summer sunshine on my face and the grass beneath my toes as I hung loads of laundry on the clothesline, plotting novels in my head, then scribbling chapters down in a notebook at my bedroom desk. Oh the hours I spent at that desk writing.

Letters. Stories. Prayers. Journal entries. Correspondence writing course assignments. Devotionals I shared with others. Articles for a kids’ magazine I produced with my cousins and sister.

I wrote and rewrote. Learned by trial and error. What words work? What do people like reading? What heart message am I compelled to pour out?

The thing about life though is that no matter how much you do something, your skill can always be honed more. Your craft improved. Your art refined.

As a mom over the past few years my writing has dwindled. If I’m really honest, being able to rekindle my passion and sharpen my skills is my favorite thing about blogging again.

What do you love to do? Are you using it? Delighting in it? I’m convinced God wants us to use the gifts he’s given us to create and to enjoy the moments of our lives.