Sonic the Hedgehog recently turned 35, who was my childhood hero. I played all the games I could get my hands on, bought all the Sonic comics I could find, watched all the TV shows I could access, and even wrote some fan fiction for a Sonic webpage (thank God that page no longer exists).

I was never good at drawing, but I got tracing paper and traced him like crazy. I traced the comics and even paused the Sonic anime movie I found in the discount bin at Toys R’ Us to trace him right off the TV screen. I also tried to mimic the way he ran when I played soccer, which felt super cool but looked super dumb.

Fun fact: while my wife fought hard to name our son Beckett, the idea of giving him the middle name Miles came from me. I based this choice on Sonic’s sidekick, Miles ‘Tails’ Prower.

Though I couldn’t draw worth crap, that never stopped me from making comics. Whenever I got bored in school, I’d sketch out another issue of Teenage Mutant Ninja Gerbilz, Wally the Turtle, HouseMan, or my favorite series, Checkers the Hedgehog. He looked exactly like Sonic, except he was green and wore a black-and-white checkered cape, which happened to be my childhood blanket. The series was basically a parallel universe of the Sonic world; he had all the same friends, but they had different names and colors. The only additional characters were a funky-looking bird and a badly drawn giraffe.

This all sounds silly, because it generally is. I like to joke with my friends about these parts of my childhood, but I still hold them close in my memories. While I may not be a hardcore fan of Sonic anymore, there’s a part of him and of Checkers that lives on in me—adventure, heroics, leadership, teamwork, attitude, speed, and standing strong in the midst of dire stakes.

A few years ago, I was leading someone through inner healing when something strange happened. An image came to their mind of me wearing a black-and-white checkered hat with a pet porcupine, and being handed a green gem. Startled by the themes they had just tied together, I showed them a picture of a porcupine and a hedgehog and asked which one they saw. They said it was the hedgehog. I then pulled up a picture of the classic green Chaos Emerald from the Sonic games. They knew nothing about Sonic the Hedgehog, but said that was what they saw in their mind.

The dire stakes had never been higher than they were in that season of my life. And it was there that the same Jesus who tells us to become like little children, spoke to the child inside of me. All of the good things that Checkers the Hedgehog meant to me were living on in me. God cared about the pieces of me that I would have never assumed he cared about. He took note of my childhood passions and interests like a good Father would. And then he turned it into a much-needed word of encouragement at that time.

What parts of your childhood might our Father want to bring to your mind?

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AI Renditions of Checkers the Hedgehog