I is for IMAGINATION

My daughter, Addie, received the Webkinz blue hippo from Santa Claus this Christmas. Addie loves Elvis Presley (which I can assure you is entirely genetic, from her dad); and since she got a blue hippo on Christmas day, and Elvis sings "Blue Christmas," she decided his name should be Elvis.

A few days ago, we were all sitting at the kitchen table, and both of the girls were playing with their (embarrassingly large number of) Webkinz. Addie shouted out, "Oh my gosh, mommy, I forgot to potty train Elvis!" With that, she and Elvis ran out the back door and into the yard. I watched from the kitchen window as Addie proceeded to walk around the yard with Elvis for a good ten minutes, whispering into his ear, placing him on the ground from time to time, shaking her head "no" several times, then finally picking him up and kissing him and smiling. She came back in the house, threw him on the counter and said, "Mom, you'll never believe it; NOW Elvis is potty trained! Whew! That was a close one."

I marveled at this . . . and it's not the first time I have marveled at my children in this way. I find myself often envying them their incredibly active imaginations.

Where along the way to adulthood did I all but lose this wonderful gift? For I believe, like many of the mystics, that imagination is indeed a gift. To be able to imagine yourself as someone else, or visualize something from nothing, or to imagine the world not as it actually is — actors and actresses surely have this gift in abundance, but most of us, I'd guess, are just too exhausted by the day to day stuff to have much imagination left.

How blessed we are that God gives us children, so that we do not forget that things don't always have to be what they seem. There is beauty in pretending, in the ability to dream and create and visualize beyond what we see with our eyes. My response to Addie: "Wow, honey, that was a close one! Elvis is lucky to have a mommy like you."

Perhaps I haven't lost my imagination after all.

Imagination is the sacred gift of seeing; the ability to peer beyond the veil and gaze with astonished wonder upon the beauties and mysteries of things holy and eternal. The stodgy pedestrian mind does no credit to Christianity!
- A.W. Tozer