Creativity.

It is a gorgeous night tonight here in the Midwest.  A little bit warm with an equally warm breeze.  I have been reading in Shauna Niequist's, Bittersweet, over the past few weeks.  I am a fan of her writing.  It is very relaxed and tends to draw on your heart strings.  Well, at least on mine.  She tends to leave things open ended and up to you for reflection.  Tonight I read a few pages and it kind of summed up something I have been bouncing through my simple mind as of late.  She was talking about creativity when she said,

The world doesn't need another band, per se.  It doesn't, strictly speaking, need another book or another photograph or another album.  The general world population will survive without one more stage production and one more gallery showing.

This is the thing, though:  you might not.  We create because we were made to create, having been made in the image of God, whose first role was Creator.  He was and is a million different things, but in the beginning, he was a creator.  That means something for us, I think.  We were made to be the things that he is: forgivers, redeemers, second chance-givers, truth-tellers, hope-bringers.  And we were certainly, absolutely, made to be creators.

If you were made to create, you won't feel whole and healthy and alive until you do.

I liked her point.  We were all made to be creators and creative, all in distinct ways.  I don't think that everyone was born with a knack for DIY or an affinity for spray painting duck head bookends.  Just like I wasn't made to sing opera or dance a la Usher--like seriously.  And yet, we have this propensity to be like our creator.  Creative in life giving ways.

With two crazy girls running around, sometimes I feel creatively depleted.  I don't have enough breath in the day some days to fulfill that deep desire to play around with crazy glue and glitter, let alone update our blog with anything more newsy than those five loads of laundry I squeaked in after finally getting the gals to bed.  But I am slowly learning that that's okay.  It's okay because I was patient with Ona today when she splashed half her bath on the bathroom floor.  And it's okay because I was there to soothe Ila after her four month check-up.  And it's okay because I got to visit with an old friend.  And it's okay because I still managed to sit at my office desk for five hours today.  It is okay because it is just creative in a different way.  A different balance, a different juggle. 

Along with my sewing machine not seeing the light of day often enough, I fail at being creative in life-giving ways too.  Every single day.  I just thought Shauna had a great point when she wrote about creativity in this way.  It is this type of creativity that God is shaping inside of me as a wife, mom, and friend right now.  

And I still really like crazy glue.

What about you?  Any thoughts on creativity?  Any other duck head lovers out there?

p.s.  My family's little print shop has done a lot of work for the creative combo of Lindsay Letters + Shauna Niequest.  Sneak a peek here.