I was
going to write this without revising. I failed. I got half way through my first
draft and I said, “No that’s not good.” And so here I am, starting over.
Rewriting:
I use
words that my friends use. I find myself doing things the way my Mom does them.
I
love how a friend is not afraid to sit on the floor: I sit on the floor too.
Another friend studies hard: I tried to be studious too. I imitate people all the time.
But I never imagined that I would
be imitated. Late Sunday night I pulled up a friend’s blog post and was
completely surprised that she had captured my writing voice, and then turned it
into her own. She even used pound signs,
a writing tool meant to block out scene changes. (She had given me a lot of grief over
them, calling them, “silly.”)
Even in a section of writing where she
strictly limited herself to my style, her quirky playful-self came out and I was relieved to see how it didn't rip away her identity. (She
couldn’t avoid her beloved colons. I
rarely use colons; am only just beginning to adopt them, if look above I have
three. This never would have happened without her. You might say I’m imitating her
too.)
She gave me one of the the best
gifts or tributes she could make to my writing with her imitation. And just to
add to it, she also offered a peak into her heart that night.
Imitation. A window into our hearts: God wants that.
If I, a human, feel so privileged
to have someone imitate me, should I not remember that I am meant to be an
imitator of Christ? After all, I was made in God’s image. I never quite thought
of it that way before. I always thought we imitate Christ so that we could be
perfect, like He is perfect. So that we could… improve and be better. I wondered if we would loose something of ourselves when we did it. I knew
it made Jesus happy as kid, but I never thought about why. I never thought that
me thinking, What would Jesus do?
might be an act of love.
