Mom Heart Moments #190

You will keep in perfect peace all who trust in you, all whose thoughts are fixed on you!

SARAH WAS ALWAYS OUR “BOOK GIRL.” She started reading on her own at five and had read all of the Chronicles of Narnia, the Little House series, and many other books by the time she was seven. She loved books and reading from the time she could turn a page, and she still does.

When Sarah was fourteen, we moved to Monument, Colorado, and she had no friends there. It was a lonely time for her at an age when girlfriends are an important part of growing up. She had read all of the Anne of Green Gables books when she was younger, but now that she was a teen like Anne, she revisited the series. She also read about the author, Lucy Maud Montgomery, and how her imagined stories about Anne Shirley and Diana Barry had been inspired by her own life experiences. Sarah dreamed of becoming a writer like Montgomery, whose stories about the kinds of girlfriends Sarah didn’t have then encouraged her and fed her imagination.

What she couldn’t see then is that this period of loneliness would create strategic and undistracted time for her to think about stories and writing. At sixteen, she completed her homeschooling senior project, “Journeys of Faithfulness: Stories for the Heart for Faithful Girls,” an imaginative retelling of the stories of four single women in the Bible. She would later write other books, including Read for the Heart, Caught Up in a Story, and Book Girl, and she is now working on a novella.

When I look back, I’m reminded that imagination needs time and space to grow. By God’s grace, those lonely years allowed the heart of a budding writer time to find her imagination and later release it as an author who will influence many through her words and stories.

Do you have a “bosom friend,” as Anne would say? Thank the Lord. Do you not? How might this lonely season be of benefit to you?