In The Past

To Cece (my younger self):

I met you this evening, while sorting through the remnants of my past. Fingering through papers you wrote on with all the heart a little girl could muster.

I opened the stickers you so lovingly placed on little notes that you passed to your sister when she was having a bad day. Notes that make me chuckle. You are so dear to me, your heart shining through in every word, with her foremost on your heart. Have I unknowingly closed that shutter to an open heart? Every one of those notes, signed as Cece. I haven't been called that in years.

I read those journal entries from the days before your baptism and your passion and excitement for God's Word make me stand in amazement before a God who chose you at such a young age to be taught so much about what He was and how to know Him.

I flipped through the sketch book you coloured in, pictures of wedding dresses and animals and everything and anything else that filled your mind.

I found the Scripture copy book your grandmother sent you, with the spine cracked and falling apart, the first few pages filled with words that you put inside your heart.

I discovered notes from a little girl that I had forgotten you had such a close relationship with. Someone so much younger than you, yet you reached out and she wrote "I love you" in her scrawls.

I fingered the poems and hymns you copied out and hung around your room, a sign of the incredibly deep understanding that God somehow placed in your heart of who He was. It was nothing you did, and it never could have been, it was all what He chose to do.

I found the keys to your little locked diary and tried to decipher the faded coloured ink from one of your earliest journaling exploits. I read of your loneliness as you couldn't fit in because of your age.

And I see you and I smile and I wonder at how far God has brought me so that I am in the place that I am in right now. I so easily forget about you, I'm sorry to say. That young innocent one, whom God chose to break in so many ways and has brought through the fires hopefully molded more firmly into the image of His Son.

And it brings me back to the days of the jungles, of dancing in the warm rain, of snow chains on tires going through mud, of cocoa breaking, of climbing trees, of swimming in streams, of going to church, of everything that is my past. And it makes me so excited for my future. It makes me excited to meet you again when I return to those places, as I hear your laughter and see things from your eyes again when I go to each of those places that memory now renders hallowed.

It makes me excited about what He has done... and excited for what He will do.

And I find myself so thankful. So utterly and basely grateful for all that He has done. For how He made you, little Cece, and how He continues to grow me.

He didn't have to.... but He did.

Your older (and utterly grateful) self,
Christy