IT WAS NEVER MINE

It always amazes me how the year after I was baptized, I was encouraged to start writing. It wreaks of destiny. Your first year into your walk with Christ and the King has you fulfilling your purpose. His movements are so subtle, He had to tell me at 22 that He was doing a work in me even when I was 12. Such information flipped my perspective on its head. How much had I missed?

My first book is to be published soon. I began writing this story when I was 12. For some reason, I had enough wisdom in me to recognize that I needed further teaching in order to finish it properly and with respect. Thus, the first draft wasn’t completed until a year after I graduated college at the age of 24. By this point, it wasn’t just one story stored in this mind of mine, but nearly 100.

The Lord had been visiting me in visions cloaked in some of the best storytelling I have yet to piece together. I dreamt of dragons circling above like vultures, angels wrangling demons with faces like bulls, and antiheroes standing remorsefully in a foot blood. Each vision studied and crafted into a story for me to write in the future. I was truly in awe. God kept feeding me ideas through dreams.

However, my first book – my baby – it wasn’t from a dream. My first book was crafted by the imagination of a 12-year-old heavily influenced by cartoons, movies, and anime. It was a homework assignment forced upon me by my uncle. It was not a vision I had seen. So, I began to look at it as not good enough. It did not come from the Lord, and it was not a vision. Therefore, it was manmade and would not impress like the rest of the stories I would eventually write.

At that point in my life, my dreams had become blueprints for things to be written at a later time. If I did not see it in a dream, then it came from my mind and it was not creative enough. I stopped wanting to make my first book’s publishing a priority. It didn’t feel like a part of the masterpiece of a career that God was painting for me, but I couldn’t stop working on it. I treated it like a warmup before the real thing.

I tried to add spiritual elements to it, but I wasn’t as mature as I would’ve liked to be to try and manufacture a spiritual encounter akin to those I had seen in dreams. I had written a few, but they didn’t feel as authentic and mysterious. They felt like something a person who had grown up on church culture would write, which felt corny to me.

By the third draft, I had accepted that God would just let me publish this book for myself. It was a practice piece at best. It wouldn’t be a part of the collection of God-crafted material I would write later. I had resigned myself to that feeling.

Fast forward to my late 20s, and I had found my perspective changed again. I revisited that child’s story and had found elements as subtle as the movements of God in my writing. My book, the first of four, had spiritual elements in it that wouldn’t come to fruition until the very last book. My skill, and my faith, had improved.

Then, it happened. I dreamt of one of my characters, piecing together a portion of his story that had yet to be written. I woke and thanked God. Then, like a flood, my previous thought had been washed away. God wasn’t helping me to finish my book. God was showing me that it was His book all along.

God can use an uncle who speaks with Him daily to force a child who barely knew Him to write His book. I reflected on all the subtle changes that had been made. I watched my thought process and writing style change. It went from being a random story with a ridiculous number of run-on sentences to a well thought out epic with over 100 bullet points and characters in an outline. What I meant to be fan fiction for shows crafted by other people turned out to be a whole new story from the hand of God. My story wasn’t mine.

The dream couldn’t have been more than five minutes. It was one scene deep into the epic that I haven’t even written. Though it was a dream, I could tell it was a part of the story I had been writing more than half of my life. By the sixteenth year, these characters are real to you. You can tell their habits, thoughts, and actions. These weren’t random characters from another book that God was handing me. These were the characters I created, being affirmed by God. I had been writing His book all along.

I wish I could describe to you how joyous it felt to be told that this book wasn’t some childhood fantasy. It wasn’t some manmade fabrication. It was a part of God’s divine strategy. It belonged with the books of visions handed to me over the years – the God collection, if you’d allow me to say. Even now, I am humbled and grateful to have been in His will for my life even at that young age. I was thinking turtles, rangers, dragon balls, and a ring. God was working me toward something much more unique.

The story that kid wrote has changed so much, I often wonder if he would be annoyed or impressed by what it has become. I wonder if he would feel that this is his book or God’s. My inner child hints to me that he’d be thrilled. Either way, I hope the book you read impacts your life.

Let this revelation in my life be an encouragement to you to go back and review the details of your life. It may not be about a book, but God has been doing something in your life since you were very young to guide you toward the path He has laid out for you. Go with God and find out what subtle movements you have overlooked. I hope the revelations you receive warm your heart and make you smile, as I did.

Peace and blessings,

Dario