170 - Created to Create

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Show Notes:

Someone once told me that we are most like God when we are creating. He is after all the creator of everything, and we are after all made in his image. Today's episode has me feeling, I don't know, a bit weepy, inspired, ultimately, grateful. Fair warning: might cry by the end of this. I don't know, we'll see. But this content today was inspired by a children's book that left me in tears and the simple truth that I've been kind of mulling over that we were created to create.

For the full episode, hit play above or read through below.

Well, I unintentionally took off a month from the podcast so… Hi, I'm back! I'm really glad to be back. I know that I sound like a broken record y'all, but we've been so sick this whole year. It is maddening. I sent a message out to my patrons saying that we just couldn't catch a break. I got COVID, we got strep—it just was a whole thing. And it was just right in the middle of when I was supposed to be recording podcasts and that was the one thing that I just had to let go. So I'm back. I'm so glad to be back and I'm excited to be doing weekly episodes that are shorter! I just feel like that's the right cadence for me and the right cadence for this podcast.

But when you're sick, you just get so creatively dry, like sucked dry, totally creatively depleted and so just worn down and burnt out in all areas of my life. And I was talking with my friend Kate from Naptime Kitchen. We were Marco Polo-ing each other and I was just kinda telling her how I was doing and she just was listening and responded and said, I think you just are so like creatively dry. Like, there's nothing to pull from creatively because you just don't have any kind of margin for anything, but just meeting your family's needs right now. And it's hard to create when you don't feel creative and it's hard to create when you don't have any kind of desire to. You're just totally burn out.

I felt like a rung out washcloth, like I had nothing to give. And Kate really recommended that I listened to this book called Steal Like an Artist. And so I downloaded the audio book. I, it's like a three set little trilogy. I can't remember the other two books, names, but they're like, follow up books and they're short, really short, great reads, great lessons. And I started listening to it and I just devoured it. And I loved everything that he had to say and it just reminded me of the need that I have innately in me to create. But that was hard to kind of hold and understand and operate from while I've been a mom to four little kids with just a ton of sickness, including me being sick a lot, and it has been this like groundhogs day in my life of like: wake up, plans are canceled, care for someone all day, clean, clean, clean, cook, cook, go to bed, wake up, repeat, you know, care for someone, plans are canceled, I feel sick, do what I can make it to bed and wake up, repeat.

And it's just been hard. It's just been hard. It's just been hard. But creatively, I've just had nothing to give. And as I was listening to Steal Like an Artist, I just realized that I have to fight for creativity in my own life. I need to create, God is a creator and I was made in his image.

And so I just, in the littlest ways, I have just been trying to tap into that again. And I just wanna share that it has really been so life-giving for me and has really changed my whole perspective and outlook. And it's been bite sized because I wouldn't even say we've entered into like a long season of being well yet, but just incorporating creating into my life in any way that I can has been huge for just making me feel like “me” again.

Whether it's painting something alongside my kids or just blogging (I've tried to write a little bit more on my blog recently). Just the practice of writing and putting thoughts down, taking pretty pictures again, I mean outlining a thought, even outlining this podcast is a way for me to create something. It makes me feel kinda like me. And it's because we're made in His image.

So I'm gonna go through five thoughts that I've been having that have really just touched my heart recently and why I feel like every one of us needs to make sure that we are building in space in our lives to create things.

And the first one I've said several times, which is simply that we are made in the image of God.

Genesis 1:27: “So God created human beings in his own image, in the image of God. He created them, male and female, He created them. We were created in the image of God.”

And it's beautiful because we're created on the sixth day of creation, kind of as like the pinnacle of all of his creation. He had been creating for six days in a row, light and dark and the waters and the birds and the fish and the animals and the plants and vegetation and you know, the mountains and rivers and everything on this beautiful earth. He created it. And then he created us, and I love this, this part in Jordan Raynor's book called Redeeming Your Time.

I'm gonna read you just a few sentences from that, which is such a beautiful illustration of how we two were made to create. He says,

“So if Jesus is coming back to finish his kingdom, why does it matter that you, what you and I do in the present, why does it matter that we redeem our time today because God has invited us to co-labor with him, to build for his eternal kingdom?”

That is what Paul is saying in 1 Corinthians 3:9 when he called us God's fellow workers. And if you think about it, that is how God has been working since the beginning. In Genesis, God created a lot in six days, but what's equally remarkable is what he did not create the first few days of creation was God setting up a canvas.

The sixth day was when he passed the baton of creation to us, his image bearers and called us to fill that canvas literally to fill the earth. Genesis 1:28 with things that point to his glory. I love that imagery that God set up a canvas the first few days and then he created us and then he turned it over to us so that we could create.

My second and third points or thoughts are that creating is a foundational part of work and it's a foundational part of play.

So think about your work (whatever you do): creating is a really important part of it. I mean, that's how businesses are born. It's a creative idea that someone has, that someone's seeing a need in the world and creating something, fashioning something to meet that need. He has created us to create.

And that's part of our work and that's part of what makes work enjoyable, even in jobs that we don't necessarily like. If we can create something that feels like our own or if we can contribute in some way that feels helpful, it is fulfilling to us. God created us to create as part of our work. And just like I read, God said,

Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, subdue it, rule over the fish of the sea in the birds of the air and every creature that crawls upon the earth.

Like, here man, woman, I've created you! Now go out and and take authority over this earth and work and create and and do and be all that I've created you to be.

And like I said, the second part of that is that creating is foundational to play. You think about play: what are some of the thoughts that come to your mind and your favorite ways to play or to practice? Leisure thoughts that I have are playing some music, painting, maybe sewing, tossing a Frisbee back and forth, playing a board game.

All of these aren't creating some masterpiece, but it's creating something. It's creating movement, it's creating a game, it's creating laughter, it's creating, yeah, it's just, I think part of leisure is just kind of allowing our creativity to blossom. Now a big part of play and leisure is also consuming and that is totally fine and a good thing, too.

I love watching a great movie. I love reading a good book. So, I'm definitely not saying that consuming is bad, but the fourth kind of thought that I've had is our life can get really out of balance and we can feel really unfulfilled if our consuming is greater than creating. And I think that we as people who are made in God's image get much more fulfillment out of life if the creating aspect of life is greater than the consuming aspect.

I think you need both. I think both are good. I think it's a beautiful thing to consume the beauty of others, to consume the beauty of the world around us in creation and to get out in creation. I think that's actually a very important part of being creative. There has to be creating and consuming. But you know, of course a practical illustration that my mind goes to is social media.

When I have just been consuming constantly and I'm not creating anything in my life, I just start to feel icky and angry and just bothered by the whole situation because I'm not creating, I'm not creating. And so there's a place for consuming in our lives, but we have to counterbalance that and counteract that with creating, otherwise we just aren't gonna be feeling like ourselves because we're created to create. So that's the fourth thought that I've had, that we always need to make sure that the scale is tipped towards creating.

The fifth thought that I've kind of been thinking on this whole thing is just the different ways that we get to create in our life. Because creating can look so many different ways and it's not just, I don't know my why, my mind goes to someone painting a canvas like a, a painting. That's just what I'm thinking of. That's like when I think about creating, I think of creating a piece of art for some reason, but there are so many ways to create on a daily basis. We can create with our minds, we can use strategy, we can write down words or thoughts that we're having.

We can discuss ideas with our husbands or friends. We can make a game plan for a vacation or our day. We can create that. We can create a financial plan for our, our household. We can read a book and then process what we've read and redistribute those thoughts into our own ideas and our own lives and our own beliefs and, and create something else out of those thoughts.

So we can create all kinds of things just with our minds, but we can also create with our hands, we can paint, we can create a beautiful painting if we want, any kind of art, I mean we can do calligraphy, we can, you know, throw pottery, we can build stuff, we can build a treehouse or build a deck or a fort or Legos or magna-tiles. We can sew, we can cross stitch, we can create a doll for our child.

We can do so many things with our hands, but we can also create with our bodies, we can create new plays or strategies in sports, we can score a goal, we can act out an actual play, create a scene. We can work out at the gym, we can create movement, we can create new movements or new stretches or new try new things.

Also just wanna speak to the mommas right now because our bodies work so hard when we are pregnant and creating a baby or when we're breastfeeding or bottle feeding or cooking food or chopping it up into bite sized pieces, just feeding our babies. I mean, we are creating new life when we're doing those things! We can also be creative in how we do those things. And I think as moms it's easy to forget that the very act of just creating a household is a beautiful way to bear the image of God and to use our creativity. It can feel like so much work, and I'm speaking to myself here, that we can forget to infuse beauty and we can forget to get creative with those day-to-day tasks because they can just wear on us. It can be tiring. But moms, we have such a wonderful opportunity and a beautiful role to create beauty and home and comfort and life in the walls of our home now.

I, personally, am slowly building ways that I can continue to create in my life. This podcast is one of them. You know, even just dropping to two episodes a month instead of four, it's been really good for me and I've needed it, but I've also felt even lazier or like slower or out of touch with just my creativity. Like I just kind of like the, every week, you gotta create something Nancy, you gotta create something to say of meaning, that's a challenge that I relish and I really love.

The other day when my girls were doing Art for Kids Hub, which is a great YouTube channel, if you've never done that with your kids, and they learned to draw different things. And when they were finished, I just kind of went on YouTube and looked up, okay, how to sketch peonies. I love the flower peonies and I wanted to learn how to draw it, and knew that would be a really hard flower to try to draw. And I did, I just sat there for 20 minutes and just sketched it and did a little bit of pastels on it and it was just fun.

Like I said, I'm trying to blog a little bit more. I haven't done this yet sadly, but I'm gonna get out my nice camera and just document my kiddos more because I just miss that way of creating. Creating touches my work, touches my play, but most of all, when I stop the robotic "doing" all the time of all the chores and meeting all the needs and, and I just pause and create something, it touches something deep in me, like really deep. Like it just, it makes me wanna cry. The other night my husband brought home a book. It was a children's book and someone at his work had gifted to him and it's by the same author that I've already quoted once in this podcast, Jordan Raynor. And the book is called The Creator in You.

And it's so beautiful I, I read it with the kids and I was in tears by the end of it because it just reminded me of why God made us in his image. And also just looking at my kids like I'm so excited to know who they're gonna be and what they're gonna create. Like that is an exciting thought for me. And I think about the Lord and how He's made us and how that same thought must cross His mind, like, “I'm so excited to see what my kids are gonna keep creating!”

So I am gonna take the liberty right now to read you a children's book. Bear with me, it’s just gonna take like two minutes and you'll probably hear the pages turning. I'm gonna leave a link for this kid's book in the show notes because it's just good. It's good. I'll leave the other books that I've mentioned as well in the show notes.

But I hope you enjoy just hearing these words about how God delights in us creating because it touched my heart so much. I just wanna share it with you here.

The Creator in You by Jordan Raynor —

In the very beginning, a long time ago, God created the world so that we would all know that He, Himself is a working God. Though you might think that sounds just a little bit odd, he didn't go to an office, a school or cafe, but he worked nonetheless much like we do today on a world dark and empty.
He drew up His plans to make oceans, the sky and even the land. With his work just beginning, He rolled up his sleeves and built mountains and rivers and towers of trees. He grabbed a big brush and painted the stars and dressed up the sky with Saturn and Mars with just a few words.
He made creatures appear like polar bears, penguins, alpacas, and deer. God created the world in a matter of days, a world for exploring, for work and for play. Before His day off, God had one more to do. On his sixth day of creating, God chose to make you. And now you might think that the story is ending, but in fact this is just the beginning.
God made you to look like Him, to act and work and create with Him because while in six days God created a lot, there are so many things that He simply did not, like bridges and baseballs, sandcastles and s'mores. God asked us to create and fill the planet with more. So grab a blank sheet of paper and create with your hands or draw up some plans for a lemonade stand, roll up your sleeves and build epic tree forts and someday build cities and towers and ports.
With your very own brush, paint your own Starry Night or engineer a space shuttle and blast off into flight. With just a few words, write a book or a song that sparks inspiration or a great sing along. Create new businesses, movies, medicine, and hope. Make laws or computers or a new telescope, because when you work or you make something new, you are doing what God has made you to do.
You are showing the world what your Father is like—a God who creates to bring people to light. And when you show others the creator in you, you bring joy to the world and to your Father, too.

If you're listening to this podcast and you're in the car or with your kids, it might be worth just stopping it and playing that part for them, too.

Man, I'm almost making it through the podcast without crying and not quite because that book just illustrates what I'm trying to say, that God created us to create. And that sounds simple, but I do believe the enemy wants us to doubt ourselves. And I think he wants us to stop creating because it's hard. It's hard to sometimes or we feel dry or we feel burnt out or we feel like we're comparing ourselves to other people.

But I just wanna encourage you today, like I'm encouraging myself to fight for it, to fight for that ability to create. Just keep creating because I think it's something that puts us so in touch with who God is and He loves it and He delights in it.

And as I was writing the other day and just thinking on this, I am so moved and inspired when I see other people creating! I'm so encouraged to put myself out there when I see someone else do something beautiful. And that's my prayer for you today, is as you just listen to these words, as you hear this children's book, as you hear scripture spoken over you today, that you would just keep going, that you would keep creating because that's exactly what God did, He created and then He made us in His image and He turned it over to us to keep creating for His glory and His kingdom.

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I'm gonna close with words from the book I just read because it was just too perfect on the Work and Play Podcast, it says,