When we were children,
we colored outside the lines
because we had not yet learned where they were.
We made skies purple, grass blue,
and held crayons in clumsy fists.
But nobody corrected us too harshly,
because there was time to learn the rules.
And we did.
We learned to stay in the lines when writing.
And to stay in the lines on the road.
Graduate. Fall in love. Build a home.
Raise your children. Grow old beside someone.
Dream as wildly as you want
But stay inside the lines.
Then one day,
a doctor draws a line
through everything you thought came next.
Suddenly the page is unfamiliar.
Plans become appointments.
Ordinary days become precious.
Bodies change, roles change,
and the people who love you learn
to redraw their lives around what remains.
So you adjust.
You color where there is room.
You learn new shades of courage,
new shades of grief,
new shades of love.
You learn that some days
faith is bright yellow,
and some days
it is barely a pencil mark
you can still see on the page.
But perhaps we have misunderstood the page
Because we did not invent the lines.
Before there were crayons in our hands,
there was an Artist.
The first Artist.
The One who made blue before anyone had a word for blue.
Who painted sunsets
without asking where the edges belonged.
Who designed neurons
and taught them how to carry
a thought,
a memory,
a laugh,
a prayer.
The One who placed within this earth
the elements, plants and mysteries
human hands would someday transform
into medicine.
He designed the mind that studies,
the hands that operate,
the heart that keeps loving
long after it has grown weary.
And look at His creation:
rivers meander,
branches twist toward light,
clouds abandon their shape,
no two fingerprints repeat themselves,
and no sunset asks permission
before spilling beyond the horizon.
Creation was never a coloring book.
We invented the borders.
We taught one another
that a good life should fit neatly
inside them.
But hold one human life
against the immensity of all God has made:
the oceans, the galaxies,
the neurons firing beneath our skin,
the billions of stories unfolding at once..
and suddenly,
there is very little sense
in worrying whether we colored correctly.
No matter where the lines move,
the Creator of the universe
is still the original Artist.
And He has never needed lines
to make something beautiful.
Cher
