So I've been taking an accidental blogging hiatus. Well, kind of a general writing hiatus actually. At first I resisted it and tried time and time again to write anything - poems, oddly rhythm-ed prose (I guess technically still poems, but I discount them), trite bits of scenes...anything - but it all sucked and it wasn't real so I stopped. I didn't get why I couldn't write. I thought it was because I'd reached my limit...that I'd already said all the things I had to say and I was done, my time was up. But that's not true. People like me, (much to the vexation of folks who haven't got the time to read the flighty soul-wanderings of silly girls) we never stop talking/writing/coming up with things we think are important to say - if only for our own mental health. Then I thought it was really because I'm not an artist, that there isn't one single artistic bone, cell, atom, whatever's smaller than that, in my body or soul. But then I started thinking about what an artist really is and how there aren't really any specific requirements and all that. My current working definition of an artist is just somebody who likes to create things with purpose. So I realized it was unfair to say there is nothing that makes me an artist, because I'm a kid who likes to create things that have or serve a purpose. Sometimes that purpose is just to get things out of my brain and onto a thing - a canvas, or a computer screen, or a doodled-on crumpled-up piece of paper - so that I can see it and figure it out. Sometimes that purpose is to understand the world around me a little better and put my understanding out there in hopes that maybe someone else will understand the world a little better too. Sometimes - though, honestly, not nearly enough...and when I say that, I mean rarely ever - it's to glorify God, this absolutely creative and beautiful and breathtaking Being that, for some reason, chose to imbue me, this punky, lame, flighty kid, with an appreciation for creativity and beauty and soul-excavating through art.
[Here let me say that there is no such thing as "enough" when it comes to glorifying God. I really suck at it. I'm trying to be better at it, but really, I suck. What happens to me sometimes though is that I'll start out writing to my own personal end and then somewhere after the first couple sentences, God graciously takes over and redeems my selfish attempts at creating. I still don't get why He does these things for me sometimes, but that's just that indelible grace.]
So I decided it wasn't that I had reached my quota of things to say, or that I'm not creative, or that I simply suck as a human being. I've learned a couple things in life, and one of them is that there are seasons. And I'm not talking about the weather. There are human seasons - relationship seasons and well-being seasons and empty seasons and creative seasons - and they can last weeks or months or even years. For me, there are probably two different kinds of creative seasons: there's the give-and-take, where there's an almost-constant in and out flow of art, and then there's the be-still, where everything I try to create is a flop and I find myself having to sit out the game for a minute and take gulps of the art around me. The latter is the one I feel I've been in for a bit now (though I've occasionally managed to spit out a post here and there). I resented it and fought it and tried every trick in the book to get over it, but to no avail. I'm like a child resisting a nap, fighting and trying to run away, but ever so needing the rest. And then there's my Father, comforting me: "Shh, shh, Beloved. Be still. Rest now. Attend yourself to My ways, to My art. Take some time to just sit back and learn, before your work loses its meaning entirely. Let Me lead you in this rest and then let Me lead you when it's time to start creating again. Learn to listen to the creative murmurings that I place within you."
And that's what I intend to do. It may be that the understanding is the beginning of the end of it. It may be that I'll be in this season for a while longer. I'm not sure when I'll get put back in the game. I'm okay with that.
However, in the near future, The Prismatic Life will be taking on some changes and maybe even a new home, so be on the lookout for that! Stay real, folks.
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