Creating

As a young girl, my goals and ambitions about what I wanted to be when I grow up took on many forms. Do people even ask young children that question anymore? I know I don’t.

Since I loved school, my first choice was to be a teacher. Being an avid reader, I often adopted a profession that was in one of the books I was reading. I’d be an astronaut, an archeologist, a nurse. When I became a Christian at fourteen, I decided I wanted to be a missionary. The only one of those desires that I achieved was to work for nineteen years in a home mission work in Phoenix.

I always wanted to write, but for whatever reason, I didn’t consider that a profession. And it goes without fail that I wanted to be a wife and mommy, probably more than I wanted to be anything else. I didn’t consider that a goal or ambition because I grew up in an era when that was just an automatic assumption for little girls.

I dabbled at writing much like some dabble at religion. By the way, religion is dull and lifeless. A relationship with our God, our creator, and His son, Jesus Christ, is something else entirely. Now that’s life-giving!

When I retired, I decided, with encouragement from others, to write – be a writer. Once I opened my mind and heart to this, I found I had stories churning and frothing inside me looking for an outlet. I became that outlet.

In fulfilling my dreams to be a mother, I found I loved creating people, pouring over names to give them, helping form personalities and traits, and watch as these whom I created blossomed into their own being. To me, that’s the fun of developing characters as I write. I can give them any name, personality and occupation I want. Later, if I decide I don’t like the name, or if I want to change some nuance of a personality, I have the power to do that.

It makes it so much fun!