The Story She's Practicing Before She Knows It

There are moments that feel small…until you realize they are shaping something eternal.

As I watched my granddaughter, Indie Mae, carefully push her baby doll in a tiny stroller in this video, her steps were slow and deliberate. She wasn’t playing randomly.

She was becoming something.

Every movement carried intention.

Every pause held attention.

Every glance reflected what she has already seen.

She wasn’t just pushing a toy. She was practicing a life. Because somewhere along the way, Indie has been watching, watching her mom, Lizzie…watching her dad, Matt…learning what it means to care, to nurture, to love.

No one handed her a manual. No one sat her down for a lesson.

She simply became what she beheld.

And as I watched the video, I couldn’t help but feel the weight of it: We are all becoming something . . . long before we realize it.

The truth is, our lives are not first shaped by what we say we believe…but by what we consistently behold.

The quiet moments.The unseen rhythms.The ordinary, repeated choices.

They are writing something in us.

And eventually…they are writing something through us.

Indie doesn’t yet know the depth of what she’s doing.

She doesn’t know she is stepping into a story that began long before her, a story of love, of presence, of family, of care.

But one day she will.

One day, what feels like play will become identity.

What feels like imitation will become instinct.

What feels like small will reveal itself as sacred.

And that’s what I’ve been discovering more and more in my own life: God is always writing.

Not just in the big, defining moments, but in the quiet, unnoticed ones we are tempted to overlook.

He writes through what we pay attention to.

He writes through what we practice daily.

He writes through who we choose to follow, to watch, to become like.

Scripture tell us in 1 Corinthians 11:1: “Imitate me, as I imitate Christ.”

We don’t drift into becoming like Jesus.

We behold Him…and slowly, quietly… we begin to reflect Him.

Watching Indie, I realized something I hadn’t fully seen before:

We are not just living a story, we are rehearsing one.

Every day is practice for who we are becoming.

Every choice is forming something deeper than behavior; it is shaping identity.

And maybe the question isn’t just, “What am I doing with my life?”

Maybe the deeper question is, “What story am I practicing… without even realizing it?”

This is at the heart of what I explore in my book Ink from Heaven’s Pen.

Not a story about striving to become something great, but a story about surrendering to the One who is already writing.

Because when we begin to see that God is the Author…we stop trying to control the story and start paying attention to the quiet ways He is forming us within it.

Indie doesn’t know it yet…but she is stepping into a story of love she first received by watching it lived out in front of her.

And maybe that’s true for us too.

Maybe the life God is writing in us is meant to be seen, practiced, and passed on long before it is ever fully understood.

Because the most powerful stories are not the ones we try to write on our own…

They are the ones we quietly learn to live by following the Author who never stops writing.

You’re not just living your life…you’re practicing the story you’ll one day become.