Thursday, January 22, 2015

Creativity Unleashed




You wouldn't know this by looking at me but I am constantly composing photographs and videos in my head from the day to day things happening around me. I have been driving down the road and the images I am seeing around me are so inspiring that they start to become a scene in a movie not yet written but playing in my mind. Or the light has been shining just perfectly off a man hunched over his book in a coffee shop and I snap the picture in my mind (or sneakily with my cell phone if it's handy), thinking of all the different angles and perspectives I could take that picture with. Or I see an advertisement and start to redesign the content, changing fonts and spacing and images. I can't help it. It's just how my mind works.  



I am a creative. 


It is a part of me that I ignored for a long time, so long in fact that it started pushing it's way out and into my day to day life. I ignored it for a long time because of fear - fear of not being good enough, fear of not having original ideas, basically fear of failure. For a long time that fear held me back and kept my creativity corralled.  


It took a long time to do it but I have finally stood up and looked that fear directly in the eye, declaring that no longer would it have a paralyzing hold over me. 


It's amazing what happens when you do that - look fear in the eye and challenge it's hold. It looses some of it's power over your life. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't like a one and done type of thing where I rose up and then it left. It is still a daily choice to not give in to it and put too much of my attention there. It's a daily choice to claim my inheritance as a child of the Creator of the universe and keep my eyes fixed above on the One who holds me close and walks this journey with me. 


But in it all I have found a freedom that has breathed new life and breath into my soul. In a lot of ways I feel more like me. The true me that God dreamed up as He knit me together. 


Might I still fail? Yes. But I know my failure will not take me out. If, or better yet when failure happens I will use it to grow and become better. I will pick myself up off the ground and keep moving forward because I know my loving Father is walking this journey with me and leading me one step at a time into His plans and purposes for my life. And there is freedom there. 



1 comment:

Katrina said...

"Fear of failure is a b**** you just gotta keep punching in the face. :) " - a paraphrase of a quote I heard.

I'm 100% with you on this, friend! Fear is a real demon, but when everything creative starts leaking out of the cracks of life, it's something that can't be ignored any longer!

Glad we can be on this journey together!