When you daydream of  being part of a defining moment, what activity or experience do you often visualize? For me, it could have been two things…being a writer or some type of singing ministry.

About the age of 13 I determined in my mind that I was going to write a book. After all, I thought, how hard could it be? Did I “know” anything about developing a novel that laid out a plot with twists, turns, and interesting characters? By that age I certainly had read many books and thought I had a pretty idea of “how to write a book”. I clearly remember sitting down on our living room couch with a cheap spiral notebook, pencil in hand and writing several pages. My dad was sitting next to me and casually glanced at my pen racing across the lines of each page, quietly asking me “whatcha doin’?” 

“Writing a book.”

“Ok!” was all he said in response. 

I think I remember writing two chapters of “that” book before laying the notebook down and forgetting about becoming a famous author.

Flash forward to high school and I landed in the journalism curriculum that was offered. By my senior year I was the editor of our yearbook (which won a national award!) and helped with articles for our school newspaper which was published on site. Our faculty advisor Mr. Matlock was a wonderful teacher and truly helped to lure me deeper into my love for writing. He was a stickler for quality work and meeting deadlines. Those high school journalism classes confirmed inside me that I wanted to write, somehow, somewhere. Upon graduation I had hopes to pursue working in an advertising agency but I ended up in a small business college program that led   to a 20 year career in the banking industry. Although I know those years spent in banking were far from being in a journalistic setting, I never forgot my daydream of writing someday….to the point that as a young adult I often thought how nice it’d be to write and publish a magazine or small paper that contained nothing but positive news and interesting human interest stories. Admittedly, I knew that our world gets enough daily doses of negative news and horrific events both locally, throughout our nation and the world in its entirety. 

Move through time with me again to the year 2012, when I left a part time job (stay tuned for further details) and revisited my daydream to be a writer. By now I owned a personal computer, had done a little bit of writing which had been met with encouraging feedback, and decided to launch my own personal blog. Recalling how I wanted to publish only “good news” and drawing from a family question “How hard is it to be nice?” I launched my blog titled “The Art of Nyce”. A close friend designed my logo and every week–mostly without fail–I have posed a weekly column on my site.

Now, some 11 years later, my blog is still humming along nicely…appearing on my site and shared to social media….I’m being given space each week in the “Fowlerville News & Views”. You see, I actually worked for the paper for about 10 years, managing the office for the Hortons, and was given the opportunity to write several human interest articles during those years. After submitting a Letter to the Editor about a month ago, I let Steve Horton know about my writing, my topics, always trying to be positive, encouraging, inspirational, and sometimes hit on my role as ministry leader for Celebrate Recovery.

I’m very grateful for the opportunity to expand my audience from my social media contacts into our community. My 13 year old daydream has taken on reality and though I don’t expect to win any big prizes for my writing skills, I do hope to draw you into moments that bring a breath of rest, a word of hope or encouragement, a break from those things that weigh down our hearts and minds.

This month I’ve had the privilege of teaching a brief lesson to our students who attend the version of Celebrate Recovery for their respective ages. We actually talked about “defining moments” for them, even in their young years. I was surprised and encouraged by their answers as each one spoke out loud their dreams and life plans. They listened to me, too, sharing about my 13 year old version and my path I followed, studied, worked to land where life currently has me. My prayer for each one of these kids is that they, too, can look back at their 13 year old versions of themselves and find they landed on success bathed in the joy of doing something they truly love.