If you’re currently under the impression that you are failing in the creativity department, this message is for you.
You wake up with high hopes for weaving a beautiful tapestry of productivity sewn together by imagination and inspiration. You progress on your construction as best you can, each check mark on the to-do list weaves another row on the day’s fabric. Midway through the day, you pause to look at what you’ve made, and you sigh contentedly at the way the patterns are coming together.
Then reality comes along and snips your thread.
Your to-do list gets crumpled. You realize you’re still in your pajamas at 2:00 P.M. and haven’t showered in three days. Your little people begin revolting at your announcement that it’s nap time. Your boss walks in with a surprise assignment. You get that call from the doctor’s office you were holding your breath for all week.
The next thing you know, the day is over and your high hopes for a dazzling day are wadded up like a ball of thread, tangled beyond repair.
And you decide to hide behind an apology for what you believe is an inability to cope with the demands placed upon you. You likely keep throwing the scraps of what you create every day in the corner, mourning what could have been if only you were creative.
Can I challenge you to stop apologizing? You’re doing the best you can. Even if you aren’t making what you hoped to be making with your days in this season of your life, you’re still creating valuable things. What if you went ahead and did something with all of those half-finished, twisted, sometimes colorful other times drab creations from each of your days?
If you’re honest, you can see a little bit of madness in everyone’s life, so why not embrace what you have and make a patchwork quilt with your own craziness?
Patchwork quilts say, “I’m not going to let what I have get thrown away because it looks like garbage right now.” Instead, it embraces tattered fragments of small victories from one day and intertwines them with half-done, ripped up, (and maybe even drooled upon) shreds of another day’s accomplishments.
Patchwork quilts stop the claim, “I’m not creative enough” with saying, “I don’t know exactly what I’m doing, but I’m going to work with it.”
Being creative is so much more than we think it is. Creativity is what changes the world. It’s what makes a task we dread become an accomplishment. It’s finding the positive in the midst of deep negativity. It’s not using trite words when it’s easier to say them. It’s choosing to dwell and soak in when your schedule says to run nonstop.
Creativity acknowledges that things aren’t perfect, and very rarely are they ideal, but you’re going to roll with what you have anyway, so start your own crusade to make the best-looking patchwork art you can, and you will undoubtedly inspire someone else along the way.
The ONE thing our adversary the devil preys upon most often, is creativity, because it is built firmly into our spiritual DNA. All the creativity of the Father is ours in Christ Jesus, for by with it He framed us and with it we have forward progress in our lives.