The Life We’ve Been Creating

As artists we daily create what our life is going to look like. We have a lot of creative control over the life we’re living. Don’t we?

I’m not sure we always live like we believe that.

Personally I’m trying to be more and more intentional about the life we create, allowing lots of opportunities and time to explore and imagine.  I’m trying to change my mindset from life happens TO me to life happens BECAUSE of me. I’ve been guilty of feeling I am just a victim of my life’s circumstances, as I sit, passively stuck waiting for the life I dream of to fall out of the sky. Now I’m trying to awaken to the reality that life is what I make it. If I want a CHILDLIKE home that feels magical and exciting, then I’m going to do my creative best to make that come about.

I’m still putting pen to paper on this train of thought, trying to hash out all of the implications that come with knowing and creating the life I long for. These realizations are so exciting to me.

I have to tell you, it’s been neat to see the trail God has me on. As I look back over the past year of my life, there has been a lot of big change occurring. It was just last July that I stopped reading the Bible. I needed a break. I wasn’t finding God there, as crazy as that sounds.

Then in November I started reading Galatians, and I haven’t stopped since. I’ve been on a journey of establishing my own relationship with God, apart from what I’ve been told that needs to look like. That romance with Him, and I call it that because He has stirred my heart greatly as an artist, has led into all sorts of growth that I had been trying to force for years.

The people pleasing I was fighting so viciously with last Spring is beginning to drift away. The more I pursue God naturally, in my own way, the more He reveals Himself to me. My CHILDLIKE awe of Him has returned. He is so much more than attending a church, paying a tithe, taking communion, not sinning and reading my Bible.

He is an Artist! He is in the business of stirring hearts, of breathing life into dead lungs, of taking the mundane day-to-day family life and making it enjoyable.

We long for it to be true. I know I did, last July, when I could see God more in the sentences of Frankenstein then I could in the HOLY BIBLE. But I felt like I wasn’t seeing God in the RIGHT places. I felt like I didn’t have the rules of religion down and that without those rules, He wouldn’t care much to hear from me. Life had become a rut, and even though I wanted out of it, I was scared to move.

Galatians has taught me about my value. It has taught me I am loved not because of what I do, but because God is love and He has sacrificed greatly to love me. God’s love for me is not based on my Bible reading or my life of service or all the rules that I obey.

Artists try and point us to the free life. It pours out of art. Think about the freeing movement of dancing or free-flowing paint strokes or music that makes your heart come alive. We crave freedom, a heart that is joyful. I thought I could get that through religion. I mean there are rules that should govern our faith, right? But the rules make me cold and stiff. The rules make me mad at my husband or kids when they don’t live up to the standards. The rules make my home a war-zone, where we’re fighting with each other instead of for each other. The rules turn friends into enemies. The rules make me tired. The rules tell me I’m stuck. The rules tell me I’m a victim of a broken life I can never repair. There is no freedom to create the life we long for when all we can think about is ourselves and how miserably stuck we are.

I am finding great joy in the freedom that God, the Artist, offers. He invites me to live out a life where grace covers everything. Grace covers my mistakes and grace covers the mistakes of those around me. Grace allows me to move freely, even in my imperfection. (An artist needs to know that!) The grace-filled life invites, the rule-filled life condemns.

So you want your life to look a certain way? You want to be smiling a lot, whistling while you work, waking up excited to step into what is waiting for you? You want to be an artist that is creating out of overflow rather than scraping the bottom of the barrel for security?

I suggest you stop trying to follow the rules. Stop trying to protect your world. Stop trying to hunker down in your trench until the war ends and you’re no longer a victim. I suggest you become CHILDLIKE and get to know the Master Artist. Perhaps you get to know Him like you used to know Him as a child, or perhaps you get to know Him for the first time. Whatever the case may be, pursue Him wherever you hear His voice. Chase Him.

I don’t quite understand it all yet. I don’t have it all figured out. But what I do know is that I have never felt more alive because I suddenly have the freedom to create the life I’ve always wanted, and it’s all because of Him.