Creativity

Over the years, coming to visit my parents on their remote property in Louisiana, I found that the creative juices flowed more readily. I found myself writing pages upon pages, painting canvas after canvas. The ideas flowed fresh and vibrant and I felt the liberty of losing myself to relax and dream and build. My children too, had this freedom and always looked forward to visiting Granny and Pawpaw’s ‘Farm’.

Here I am, thirty-eight years later, wondering…where did the creativity go? Why, having uprooted from my suburban home, with high hopes and ideas for growth, am I finding it so difficult to write and paint and build? What has happened?

I am besieged by responsibilities heavier than I knew. I am overwhelmed with cares bigger than I have seen before. I am constantly on the defense and emotionally preoccupied…Creativity is squelched and my imagination is paralyzed. The enemy to my soul seems to be sitting, watching and waiting for me to be still before God; waiting to pounce and devour all that is good flowing out of me.

I am asking God if I can back up and start over. Is that even possible? What made me think that coming to visit was the same as living here?

Creativity is God breathed. He is a creative Being and He has passed on His inheritance to me, His daughter. Why is this then happening?

Am I lacking in trust? Am I not available to Him to be used? Am I so distracted and led astray that the beauty will not come forth?

I don’t have the answers tonight. Maybe tomorrow?

Or maybe a few years later….

I wrote the above in 2021. It has been sitting in my ‘drafts’ for THREE years!!! What the what?!

These things that plague us go round and round do they not? What bothered me three years ago probably bothered me when I was ten. Yes…I somehow remember not being able to settle down then either. I would no sooner start a task and then get distracted and move on to the next thing.

I once heard a speaker say, “quite often, as we go ’round the mountain’ and face similar pits and problems again and again,
God allows this so that we can learn how to deal with those problems in a bigger and better way, perhaps discovering something new each time we come ’round to it’ again.” (Sy Rogers)¹

Well surely…this is my plight; this same issue of not wanting to deal with things, or to get down to business, or to finish the tasks. I want to have it in my way, in my time, thereby, spinning my wheels and stifling the creative flow.

I am looking at this again. I am forced to stop and listen. What is there to learn here Lord? How can I do this better? How can I allow Your Sprit to guide these faltering feet, this halting pen?

In this season, of dwelling at the Feet of Jesus, of decreasing the continual flow of the noisy world in my life, I am hearing and seeing and taking in a deeper truth.

In this, I co-create with the Living God. I am pliable clay in His Hand. I am allowing Him to fight the battles. I am watching His Work and going where He is going, doing what He is doing, saying what He his saying.

There are very definite growing pains here. I am being stretched and challenged to do things differently; and not the way I have always done them…

I have crazy moments. I am full of unruly feelings. I am struggling and working through it all. Like the butterfly, I MUST struggle to come forth out of the cocoon or I will not survive. I don’t much like the struggling -but is necessary…

This.

“And I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them. And I will take the heart of stone out of their flesh and give them a heart of flesh…”

-Ezekiel 11:19

I want my heart to be united with God’s heart. I want to creatively intercede with Him. This is my desire and I believe that He will give me the desires of my heart because it is aligned with His desire for His people…

1. From lecture at Foothills Christian Church ↩︎