As a little girl, Meredith Davis read so much that her mother would often make her go outside — where she proceeded to continue reading in the sun. Life may have gotten more complicated in adulthood, but Meredith never lost touch with her simple love of reading and storytelling. She’s since gone on to write three middle-grade books of her own: two within her superhero series, “The Amazing Adventures of Noah Minor” and “Her Own Two Feet,” a book she coauthored with Rebeka Uwitonze, who was born with clubfeet and took a chance on walking at 9 years old.

Today, Meredith is sharing the daily habits that help her slow down and combat her propensity for overfilling her schedule as well as the practices that fuel her creativity in writing. She’s also getting honest about how she’s discovered her own “superpowers” over the years — and how others can discover their own.

QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT

The meals we enjoy are about so much more than the food we eat. So how does a “go-to” meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind your web bio?

Living in Austin, Texas, summer can be sweltering, and the eating can get eaten by hungry mosquitos. But in spring, fall and sometimes winter, when we get a nice, free evening, Fresa’s is one of my favorites. We call our kids and friends — usually at the last minute — click a leash on our double doodle dog and hop in the car to meet whoever we could find who was also free.

Fresa’s has a wide-open patio under sprawling oak trees and long picnic tables. Kids run around, their skin dusted with colorful chalk or sticky from bubbles. Dogs of all sorts sprawl in panting harmony — doodles and wiener dogs and labs and mutts.

We sit under massive oak trees as the sun sets and the stars come out and the string lights come on. Those picnic tables are just the right size for my husband and me, our three kids, their two spouses and one fiancée, our friends or their friends and our grandson, with room for at least one more grandbaby coming this September. We laugh and tell stories and linger, and it is magical.

Also, I love chips. They are good at Fresa’s and come with a montage of sauces and guacamole.

QUESTION #2: REVEAL

We’ve all got quirky proclivities and out-of-the-way interests. So what are yours? What so-called “nonspiritual” activity do you love engaging in that also helps you find essential spiritual renewal?

I’ve got two seemingly unrelated passions that both accomplish the same task — they slow me down. The first is picture books. They aren’t just for kids! Even when alone, I delight in grabbing a stack and settling in to admire the art and the story and how they work together with clever page turns. Picture books are an art form, and good art slows us down. By slowing down, spending time with simple stories, pared to their leanest form and illustrated to hold the attention of the very young, I become more childlike. That is where God wants me.

My second out-of-the-way and sometimes hard-to-believe-it’s-holy activity is skimming our pool. We’ve never owned a pool until our current house, and so I never realized how much I would enjoy grabbing that long pole with a net on the end of it and slowly raking it across the top of the water, grabbing pollen and leaves and June bugs. There is something really soothing and mesmerizing about it. Go too fast, and you push things away. You’ve got to go slow. As I work myself around the edge of the pool, I work myself into a meditative space. God speaks to me there.

QUESTION #3: CONFESS

Every superhero has a weakness; every human too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re all broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite, and how do you confront its power head-on?

As a middle grade author of “The Amazing Adventures of Noah Minor,” chock full of superheroes and superpowers, I love this question. Anyone who knows me well would tell you I talk too fast, and the same goes for the rest of me. I like to zoom through my days, check lots of things off my list and go, go, go!

My kryptonite is a nice, juicy, empty spot on my calendar. It gives me the illusion that I have time to squeeze one more thing into my waking hours. There are books and articles and reviews to write, marketing strategies for said books, critique groups and manuscripts to edit for friends, and the list goes on. But even if the opportunity vying for a spot on my calendar is a good thing, a fun thing, maybe a chance to volunteer, watch my grandbaby, have lunch with a friend or play pickleball, that doesn’t mean I should say yes. But I usually do.

How do I hide the fact that I’m going too fast, trying to do too much? Not well. I arrive five to 10 minutes late with wet hair because I saw a hole in the day and got a quick workout in, then needed a shower. Talking fast as I apologize, my weakness is all too clear. I haven’t budgeted my time well. Again.

In addition to always being late, filling my day with tasks to check off a list means I spend too much time doing, with no time or energy left to sit with a story and write. This makes me cranky and panicky as I start to lose the fine thread of a narrative I must touch every day before it slips out of my grasp. One way to fight my chronic rush and inevitable frustration with myself and my work is by scheduling writing time into my calendar and making appointments with myself. I know that isn’t very original, but these “appointments” are big stop signs for me.

I’ve also learned how to breathe again, thanks to a Pilates class that isn’t about getting my heart rate high, high, high but about paying attention to my breathing as I slowly corkscrew my legs, focus on my abs, concentrate and find the right muscle to push or pull. It’s been a game-changer. Getting in touch with my body as I breathe in through the nose and out the mouth slows me down when I’m spinning too fast.

QUESTION #4: FIRE UP

Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?

I’ve been obsessed with superheroes and superpowers for the past three years as I’ve written and shepherded a couple of superhero middle grades into this world. If you had asked me two years ago, I was taking a deep dive into Spiderman while I wrote the first book in the series, “The Minor Miracle.” Last year, it was the Hulk as I wrote and edited book two, “The Minor Rescue.”

The thing is, ask someone what superpower they wish they had, and no matter how old they are, they’re immediately engaged. They have an opinion. But when I ask what their actual superpower is, they often hesitate. They roll their eyes. Somehow, we’ve become convinced we’re really not that super.

Whether we’re 12 years old or 53, we can feel unimportant when our most powerful gifts go unrecognized by ourselves or others. We figure maybe they aren’t really anything special and neither are we. Annie B. Jones, author of “Ordinary Time,” says, “You can live a really deep, meaningful existence in a small place.” Don’t overlook the power of being a good friend. It can change a life. What about when we notice what others don’t? Or offer a smile to a stranger?

We may never know the full extent of what happens when we lean into our strengths, but I delight in the glimpses I’ve seen. Writing stories is a superpower, and I claim it. Do I really think a children’s book author can change the world? It can make a dent, one story at a time.

QUESTION #5: BOOST

Cashiers, CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need grace flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?

I know it’s God when I encounter the uncanny, the mysterious, the seemingly coincidental that can’t be ignored. This happens around my work as much as it happens in it. My first book was not what I had ever envisioned writing. With my eyes turned to fiction middle grade, my heart and opportunity turned to a narrative nonfiction middle grade. I coauthored “Her Own Two Feet” with a young Rwandan girl who lived with us for a year while having surgeries on her club feet.

I thought those two worlds were entirely separate, the writing work and the personal life, until I saw how God worked to bring them together. That first book has sold over 150,000 copies, and reached far beyond what I could have hoped or imagined. Definitely God at work.

While in Rwanda, working on that book, I met a Nigerian-American teacher who would later become an editor at a publisher who would edit and champion my second and third books. This was no uncanny coincidence either. God was orchestrating it all along.

The Spirit also hovers over my keyboard, waiting for me to give myself the time and attention to enter a state of “flow.” In these moments, the story twists itself into truths I didn’t set out to write. I find them later, like gold nuggets or ticking time bombs, exploding with personal relevance in a story that wasn’t supposed to be about me. In the end, it is about God teaching me and revealing himself to me. He is living and active and involved in all my days and all my work.

QUESTION #6: inspire

Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you in this season?

Every morning, after settling into my blue chair, I make a short entry in my line-a-day journal, percolate my brain with some caffeine (whipped cream on top, every morning) and then take the first fruits of my now-awake brain and work on a poem inspired by a chapter of the Bible.

I started this practice in 2021, and it is the most effective way I’ve found to marinate and meditate on Scripture. What I read and the poem I write in response stay with me as I move throughout my day, the same way a manuscript does. It’s because I’m engaged with it creatively, puzzling through how to say what I want to say about what I’ve read.

I’ve loved it so much I’ve committed to writing a poem for every chapter of the Bible, and I’ve started sharing them at biblepoetryproject.com, a website my husband created. So far, I’ve got a little over 300, and when I look at the years it will take to finish the project, it only makes me happy. I get to do this for a long while, and when I finish, I could honestly start all over again. On this read-through-the-Bible-slow plan, God will have something else to say to me then.

QUESTION #7: FOCUS

Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top three resources stand out to you? What changed reality and your heart?

I love middle-grade fiction. I always have, from the time I was the intended audience of 8 to 12 years old. As an adult, I set out to write it, feeling my way down a dimly lit path. I distinctly remember getting to the end of the middle-grade book “Boys of Blur” by N.D. Wilson and thinking it had a powerful message of redemption for a book published by a traditional, secular publisher. Then I read through the author’s note and realized Wilson was a believer. I wanted to do what he had done — write an excellent story with depth and strong undercurrents of faith that could hold its own in the secular world. Because that’s who I was, someone with a faith story to tell in a secular world that didn’t seem that interested in listening.

A few years later, I “mistakenly” ordered a copy of “Living the Message” by Eugene Peterson. It’s a daily devotion, short outtakes from Peterson’s writings that I’ve heavily highlighted. His perspective on parables re-clanged the gong I’d heard when reading “Boys of Blur.” He writes, “As people heard Jesus tell these stories, they saw at once that they weren’t about God ... they relaxed their defenses ... the stories lodged in their imaginations. And then, like a time bomb, they would explode in their unprotected hearts ... they had been invaded!”

And then there is Mary Oliver’s “Devotions,” inviting me into quiet contemplation that points my gaze to a world I too often run past without stopping to linger. She braids the secular and the sacred together and gives me eyes to do the same as I continue to write and tell my stories. The path grows less dim with her words.

We all have things we cling to to survive or even thrive in our fast-paced, techno-driven world. How have you been successful in harnessing technology to aid in your spiritual growth?

While I try to begin each morning free from technology, with a stack of books and coffee in my favorite, beautiful, handcrafted mug, my phone is near at hand for the sake of the Blue Letter Bible (BLB) app. Whenever I come across a troubling passage of Scripture I can’t synthesize with the God I thought I knew, I pray, I worry the raised dots on the handle of my beloved mug and then pick up my phone and click on BLB.

It has a quick link to David Guzik’s commentary through Enduring Word, where he goes verse by verse through the entire Bible. He gives historical and cultural background, how it relates to other Scripture and insight from the likes of Charles Spurgeon and John Trapp. I love this commentary. It opens up new perspectives, teaching in a way that feels accessible and allowing my curiosity to lead the way without ever leaving my stuffed blue chair. Because once that happens, once I stand up and leave that sacred space, the magic of the morning is broken. I enter the day with all its responsibilities, deadlines and bunny trails.

QUESTION #8: dream

God’s continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?

For most of my life, I thought I saw myself heading in a certain direction in a particular way, and I’ve been off. Ask me what to expect in the future, and I’ll most certainly be off-base. So with open hands, I’ll say I am feeling wiser with three middle grades under my belt, still full of stories and better equipped to tell them well. There’s a re-stirring as I return to a middle-grade story I’ve written and rewritten for years. I think this time I’ve got it.

Also stirring, always stirring, are new picture book ideas. They are like tantalizing puzzles, requiring just the right words, keeping them spare, distilling to the essential elements of story. For both projects, I feel a resilience and determination rising, preparation for being back out on submission. I have loved my experience with traditional publishing, so I’ll cast the net again and hope to make the magic match of the right editor, at the right time, for the right story.

But simmering on the back burner is an idea for a nonprofit my husband cooked up with my daughter. It feels too big. I’m not sure about it. The last time he had this fire in his belly and I didn’t, a flame eventually kindled in me too. We ended up with a Rwandan girl living in our home for almost a year while she had surgeries on her club feet. It led to coauthoring my first middle grade, a book that’s reached thousands of kids and encouraged them to be courageous. So I’ll take a note from them, and whatever the future holds, I’ll be courageous too.

Meredith confessed earlier that her natural inclination is to “go, go, go.” She’s not alone in this. We live in a culture that seems to praise and prioritize busyness over slowness, doing over being.

That’s why practices that slow us down are so helpful — for rest, for our health, and for our spiritual growth. For Meredith, that means reading kids’ picture books, writing Bible-based poetry, and even skimming her pool.

What practices help you slow down? If you don’t regularly engage in any, consider adding a few to your schedule this week. Maybe that means journaling or reading a well-written novel. Or maybe it’s something that lets your mind take a break, like going for a walk or brushing your cat or dog. Finding what works best for you may take some time — and that’s okay.

Meredith Davis