Making Room For Creativity-Part 4

If you are just tuning in here, we are wrapping up a series of posts on creativity and the importance of creating space in your busy life for those juices to flow. To catch up with where we are, you can click here, here, and here.

Now that you have taken control of your schedule and trimmed away the excess that was crowding your time, what is next? I'm glad you asked. Now you can allow yourself the luxury of moving about in the new "space" you have created in your days and weeks. Obviously you cannot "schedule" creative flow or determine when an inspiration will come, but it is very important to allow regular times of uncluttered freedom to explore the creative recesses of your heart. As a writer, I cannot just wait for a moment of "creative inspiration" to hit me. I have set aside regular times to just write regardless of how I feel. And it has been through this routine of being faithful to exercise my gift that I have found the sweetest inspirations. The regularity of it has proven to be a catalyst for creativity. Then, when an idea for a writing piece hits me at an inopportune moment, it is second nature to just grab that notebook I have with me at all times, and jot down my ideas and thoughts so that I can revisit this place when I have another pocket of time.

I do not have a long list of creative gifts, but many people do, so how does that highly gifted person choose where to devote this time? The answer can be found within your own heart. Where does your heart pause when it wanders through your field of deep desires? What things do you find your thoughts fixating on in moments of unrestricted mental wandering? Erwin McManus says that "When you are passionate about God, you can trust your passions." Don't be afraid to follow your heart. Because He fashioned it, what is in there is often where He wants you to invest your time and energies. In following your passions you may find that God will open doors of opportunity that you never believed possible.

I have a friend, Clay Miller, who is very gifted in video production and God recently opened a door for him to do it full time. Clay made room for that creative gift in his life and then God made a way for him to make it a career. How great to do what you love and get paid for it!

The most important thing is to make room in your life and then don't look back! Do not give guilt an audience in your life. When God is ordering your steps, you can give yourself to creativity with complete abandon and you can know that, in your most creative moments, you are reflecting the very image of the Creator God! Now don't just talk about it, be about it!

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Making Room For Creativity-Part 3

If you are popping in here in the middle of this series of posts on creativity, feel free to go here and here to catch up on parts one and two of making room in your busy life for your creative gifts. Today we are talking about what to do after you have decided to prioritize creative moments and you have made your inventory of what is and is not truly important for you in this season of your life.

Now, take that list of things you do that God never called you to do but you assigned yourself to do anyway, and begin the process of eliminating them from your schedule. Please, pick yourself up off of the floor and breathe into a paper bag if you need to. You are not going to die and neither are the people that you are afraid of disappointing. Instead let this reality sink in...if you are devoting yourself to tasks that God never called you to, you are setting yourself up for burnout and believe me, people, that is not a pretty sight. Creativity aside, streamlining your life is something that every person will benefit from because overcommitting yourself is slow suicide. Wouldn't you rather disappoint a few people than disappoint God by doing it your way rather than His way? Next, pick up the phone, write that letter, or have a sit down with the people you need to meet with to gracefully withdraw from the excess in your life. Go do this now. I will wait. I said GO!!!

Now, don't you feel better? What? You feel guilty? Ignore it...just like big hair and parachute pants in the '80s, it will pass.

Tomorrow is Friday and, as always, I will post my random and occasionally disturbing thoughts. It is a low-cal, fat-free, yet tasty little treat. I will wrap up this series of creativity posts on Monday. I just hope you can contain yourselves until then. And thanks for being here with me. I heart you.

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Making Room For Creativity-Part 2

We have been talking about creativity and finding some room in your life to just be you--the wildly or mildly creative creature that you were made to be. I find that allowing times to create does for my soul what exercise does for my body. Afterward, I feel a sense of peace and calm and I know that I am healthier for it.

Sooooo, where should you start?? The first thing to do is take an inventory of your life and the things to which you are currently devoting your time. Take a good, hard look at the things, people, or activities that are currently earning a spot on your calendar and one by one decide which ones are non negotiable and which ones can be evaluated further. The trick with this type of exercise is allowing yourself to consider the possibility of saying "no" to things that are either unfruitful, or which completely drain you. If you are someone who has a difficult time saying no, then this will be especially difficult for you, but do it anyway. This is not about being selfish, it is about being balanced.

Now, take the list of negotiable activities and decide what can be eliminated from your schedule. When I do this, I take my list and put it before God and I ask Him what He would have me do. One of the most precious commodities we have is our time and it really takes the pressure off to let Him direct our steps in this process. Since He encompasses all of time, He is most certainly able to lead you as you prioritze yours. It is helpful to remind yourself that Jesus was not motivated by human need but by the voice of His Father. During His time on the earth, He did only those things that God directed Him to do and nothing more. Why should our lives be any different? You need to get clear with God about what He is telling you to do and do only those things. Nothing more.

Let's sum up....inventory your current commitments, decide what is non negotiable, get with God and decide what things you have on your plate that God never told you to put there. Now, get back here tomorrow and find out what is next! Are we having fun yet??

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Making Room For Creativity-Part 1

In an earlier post I wrote about the importance of making room in your life for your creative gifting(s). Everyone has the ability to create in some form or fashion because we are made in the image of God, the ultimate Creator. But what if you are unsure of your own creative abilities? Maybe you have wished all of your life that you could sing, paint or play an instrument like someone else that you admire. Those are beautiful gifts to be sure, but there is a much broader horizon on the sea of creative talents than just those more recognized abilities. Rather than try to make some exhaustive list of viable creative giftings, let me instead ask you one question. If money, time and circumstances were not obstacles for you, what would you want to do? What is the passion(s) of your heart?

I call this the hot button question and I LOVE to ask people to answer it. Very often the answer to this question will help you to identify your creative gift or at least guide you into an area where you may discover some hidden creativity. Perhaps you have never entertained such a question and you don't have an immediate answer. You are not alone. Many people get so caught up in earning a living that they lose touch with who they really are, what ignites their soul. If that is the case, take some time and let your heart out of it's cage and see where it takes you.

Knowing what you love to do is step one. Making room in your life for it is the next step. Over the next few days I am going to write a series of posts on making room in your life for your creative gifts. I hope you will come back so we can explore it together.

So tell me...what is the passion of your heart??

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Soul Speak

You and I are innately designed to create. All of the beauty that surrounds us, but that we often take for granted was made by the God of the universe who also must create because it is His very nature to do so. And because we are His very image, it is also our nature to create. I have always had a personal theory that the people who are the most frustrated with their lives are so because they are not creating. Creativity comes in a million different packages and when the creative gifts we have been given remain unopened we can be nothing but frustrated and miserable because we are living in opposition to our very nature.

For years I shelved my own gift because I let myself believe there was no room for it in my life. Part of me felt dead and I found myself resenting what I had to do because I let it crowd out what I desired to do. A friend of mine a few years back challenged me to make room in my life for my writing and then guard it. She said that if I would set aside even a small amount of time to begin with, it would make all the difference. And so it has. And I have found myself again. Sue Monk Kidd says that creativity is "a conversation between my soul and me." The heartache comes when you and your soul are not on speaking terms. Have you heard from your soul lately? It is speaking to you if you will make time to listen. And if you are not intentional about it, it will never happen. Go ahead. Get reacquainted. It could very well change the course of your life.

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A Song, Some Memories and a Thankful Heart

I was reading my friend, Joylene's, blog yesterday and I was unexpectedly swept away. She had Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata imbedded in her blog about music and its magical ability to take you to another place, another time. As soon as the music began I was instantly six years old and lying on the floor beside the piano, listening to my mother play this piece and watching as her beautiful fingers danced gracefully over the ivory keys as if she were born playing this song. She was an accomplished pianist and a marvel to watch and I always knew that playing the piano wasn't just about making music...it was about losing herself in a passion that she, herself, didn't understand. Oh, how I would love to hear her play just one more time and see on her weary face the look of peace that she only wore when seated at the piano, lost in her music.

My mother and my grandparents exposed me to beautiful music; classical, opera, jazz, big band and grand choral arrangements. They also surrounded me with the very best that the literary world had to offer and to this day there is no greater comfort for me than to be in a room full of great books and fine music. I am so very thankful for these gifts that they gave to me and the lasting memories that sustain me. The simplicities of life that are most often taken for granted seem to become the priceless, decorative memories that adorn our hearts and souls in later years. As I gaze about the landscape of my own soul these days, the scenery is breath-taking and I am thankful.

What adorns your soul in this season of your life? Who do you have to thank for what you find there? We should take time in this season of Thanksgiving to truly appreciate those things deeply rooted within us and the precious people who planted them there. (And thank you, Joylene...I needed to hear that yesterday)

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What's Wrong With the Old Songs?

Have you ever wondered about that verse in the Bible (Ps 33:3) that says to sing a new song to the Lord? Why a new song? What about the old songs? Something wrong with those? (I am laughing right now because as I read what I have written, it sounds like Jerry Seinfeld wrote it-go ahead...read it out loud in his voice...enjoy. Sorry. Tangent.)

I have given this some thought and I think I get it. When you listen to or sing the same songs over and over, you don't even notice what they say anymore...they just become mental wallpaper. Any part of our lives that becomes routine (and I LOVE routine) becomes rote,unnoticable and boring. As creatures of habit we need healthy routines, but as creations of His, we need to move and shift and create and express all of that amazing "Godlikeness" that we possess. We need to break from the routine at times to get a fresh perspective, a second wind, a renewed sense of purpose. I think God is so wildly creative, above and beyond anything that Disney imagineers could even conceive of, and He wants us to be like Him.

Have you ever considered that we were created to live in the wide open? The sky was the limit for the first man and woman and they could dream as far as the eye could see and then some. The heavens are limitless and endless and we were meant for such an existence. The bigness of creation reminds us of the smallness of ourselves. But we make for ourselves small places to spend most of our hours thereby giving ourselves the illusion that we are bigger than we are. Man has built cages for animals, walls for people...we even box ourselves in at work in offices and cubicles. And when we die, we choose another box that is more expensive than your first car. The greater tragedy is that we then begin to see God through the filter of limitation and we forget that He has no boundaries.

That is why God cries out to us to sing a new song...so our hearts will awaken and we can taste and see His goodness. And His bigness. He wants us to throw our arms around the new and the fresh so that we do not become old and stale and unaware of His wondrousness. So sing a new song, drive a new route, eat new and yummy food, smile at a new stranger. Experience God in a new way. The sky is the limit.

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