Pound Signs and Colons

                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.