Throwback Sundays…My Prayer for My (Future) Children

I don’t plan on having children anytime soon. At all. So in the meantime, my prayer for my (future) child is really my prayer for every person on this earth. (full original post here)

The Mess

 

If there is one thing I’m reminded of daily it’s this: life is messy. It is a complex, multi-layered, spaghetti tangled, mess.

I’m discovering, though, that if I can accept that fact, I can see the beauty in the mess. And the beauty makes the mess bearable. I can even embrace it.

Embracing the mess means I stop waiting for life to get better & start living. Right now. In this moment. In the middle of broken relationships, tension at work, questions about faith, forgotten dreams, & health battles.

Accepting that fact…that life is messy…relieves a bit of the pressure to “fix it” or “get life in order.” I’m not saying we don’t try but we try knowing full well that we will fail. That we may rearrange the mess but we will never eliminate it. Because the mess…life…is so much bigger than us. But I also know that there is One who is bigger than the mess.

What mess are you embracing in your life in this moment?

Throwback Sundays…Squashing creativity & lots of questions

When I was a child I had big dreams. I created with abandon. I didn’t care what people thought. Somewhere along the way I learned that creating & dreaming meant risk and that risk was bad. And that everyone would simply laugh at me if I failed. And they encouraged me to just do what was safe. And so I did.

I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve heard a musing similar to that in the last couple of months. It makes me kinda sad. I think it’s great that we’re aware of our society’s tendency to kill creativity and that we want to try to change that that future generations. But how? (full post here)

I’m still asking that question. Suggestions?

In Between

What do you do with the space in between?
The space between your dreams & the perhaps not so shiny daily reality.
The seemingly large chasm between here & there.
Between what you want & what you have.
The gap between the life you were designed to live & the live you’re living.
What do you do with the space between a Kingdom that is here & not yet?
A hope that is realized & yet to come.
The gray space between the darkness & the light.
What do you do with the space in between? The kind of space that creates tension. 

I think we usually do one of three things:

  1. Make a choice. Pick one side or the other. Simply to alleviate the tension.
  2. Attempt to run out of the space in a completely different direction.
  3. Wait. Sit in the space. Accept the tension. And wait.

Number one often leads to poor choices that we end up wishing we could hit the rewind button on at some point. The second often leads to the same thing. Before we know it the life we’re living looks nothing like the one we know we were created for. 

The third option? It may be the hardest & most immediately painful of all. But, I’m convinced it’s also the most rewarding. And even more than that, the tension of the space in between may be the birth place of some of our greatest creativity. 

So I encourage you to sit in the space. But don’t just sit there. Ask God to meet you in the space. Learn from it. And more importantly, fill it. Fill the space with beauty through your art. Extinguish the darkness with the light. You may just discover that the space was not as unwelcoming as you once thought…that it didn’t want you to stay anymore than you wanted to be there. And before you know it, you might look back to find that you’ve created your way out of it.

 What do YOU do with the space in between?

*** This post was inspired by the Luminous Project. Luminous is an event in Nashville for creatives on May 9-11, 2012. To find out more, check out luminousproject.com. You can use the promo code ‘luminousLOVE’ to get 30% off the ticket price. ***