When I was a child, I lived in a magical world where fireflies were fairies dancing across the night sky. Not even catching lightning bugs in jars and using them as lanterns dispelled the magic. Fed by romantic fairy tales, my mind peopled toadstools with little people resting from their wanderings, drinking crystal dew drops out of the chalice of upturned flower blossoms and vanishing into the grass out of sight as morning crept into the world stealing darkness and shadows.

When I outgrew those fiction stories, I rode my bicycle up and down Georgia red clay roads at dusk looking for flying saucers. I explored spooky “haunted” houses that my friends were afraid to enter. I devoured stories about the Bermuda Triangle. One of my dreams was to travel to Scotland to look for the Loch Ness Monster.

God has a sense of humor. Here I am living in Scotland now, within fifteen miles of Loch Ness. I’ve made three trips to Loch Ness looking for Nessie. I’ve found one female mallard duck, one family of mallard ducks, and some hungry seagulls that were delighted to share lunch with me. Does that mean that I don’t believe in Nessie? Oh, no! Just because I haven’t found Nessie doesn’t mean that she doesn’t exist! I am fascinated by the sonar echoes and “swishing” sounds that exploratory vessels have picked up from the bottom of Scotland’s deepest lake.

Authors with vivid imaginations have written enduring stories that enthrall generations of readers. How blessed I will be if my grandchildren discover some of my books without being told about them: Bridge to Nowhere, Love’s Beating Heart, Heart Shadows, Until the Shadows Flee, Shadow Chase, Fear of Shadows. Or my husband’s time-travel adventures The Scent of Time and The Scent of Home. I would never equate my Christian mystery-romance-suspense books with literary classics, but I would match my imagination with the best of them!

This world is full of mystery, magic and miracles. Finding them depends on raising the line of heart vision from toadstools to Heaven. Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever. He has touched my life with miraculous healing and provision numerous times. But even if Jesus had never performed those visible outward physical signs and wonders, my changed heart itself would be a miracle.

My journey from a bitter, spiteful, unhappy God-hating atheist to a joyful Christ-loving Christian involved supernatural travel on the wings of God’s Holy Spirit. That, my friends, is magic!