"My Gift"

It happens about two or three times a week. The nightly routine goes smoothly, or at least as smoothly as possible with three kids. There are the usual baths/showers, tuck ins, ritual back scratching, prayers, soothing music, and night lights casting a warm glow of safety and warmth.

I exhale and think, mistakenly, that I will have some 'me time'.

You know, that time that never really truly comes unless you leave the state and perhaps fly to California!

I finally snuggle down into my warm bed. Perhaps I will try to read the book that has sat on my bedside table for so long. Maybe I will peruse Pinterest and pin a couple new recipes that will inevitably stay pinned in 'the cloud' and never make it to our table.

Just when I feel that the quiet has come to the house, and my chicks are safely dreaming in their beds, that is when I hear it.

CLICK!

No, it is not some scary intruder. My dog happily snoozes away and ignores the sound. To him it means nothing.

Then I see it. The BRIGHT light that emanates from under the door that just clicked shut. That is no night light folks.

That is the beacon of an artist at work.

That light means that something surreal and magical has manifested itself in the brain of my little one. Something that holds her mind and her spirit. Something that has no time for sleep and must come out.

She is at it AGAIN!

So I let her create. I let her explore what stories she has flying around in her head. I know there is no use trying to temper this. This is a fire that cannot be extinguished. I have felt it myself. It is a burning. It is a anxiousness that can only be soothed by letting it out and breathing life into what ever creation she is finding flowing from her fingers.

About twenty minutes later, she is next to my bed. With stealthy gait and piercing eyes she stares at me. How long has she been standing there? She might be a ninja! I'm not quite sure. Can ninjas be artists too?

"Mommy, I have an issue. Please don't be mad," she shyly whispers.

She holds up her hands that are rimmed with bright green marker.

I exhale a deep breath. You know the "I really want to not have to get out of this bed.....AGAIN" type of breath. The kind where you are really counting to ten silently and channeling your inner happy place.

"Don't worry Mom. It's washable," she explains with her pixie smirk.

"I'll wash them off, but I can't wash this off, " she adds as she thrusts her foot up to the edge of my bed. Green smears along the way. "I can't wash this off because this means God," she states as she shows me the cross that covers the  bottom of her five year old foot. "And we can never wash God away."

No my child, we can't ever wash God away.

After washing said marker off her hands and one of her feet, she is safely tucked into bed.

The cross remains.

Then I see IT!

The marker is not all gone. On her dresser is her name scrawled with the grassy green 'washable marker' and followed by a heart.

"Sissy, we don't write on the furniture! If you do this again, I will have to take your markers away."

"NO!!!! Please don't! I won't do it again. You can't take them away! Art is my gift. It would break my heart if I couldn't do my art!"

She is right. It is her gift.

What a different world we would live in if we all could know so early what our gifts are and live so passionately to keep them safe from being taken away.