I lay in the green grass of our backyard, staring at little purple flowers, bathing in sunshine. This, my friends, is why I love living in Georgia. I nearly lose my mind in the short few months that truly are our winter. The dawn of March finds my heart, soul, mind screaming in unison: Get. Me. Outside.
And keep me there, thank you very much.
It’s hard not to think of creation, sitting out here in it. The other night I felt like reading Genesis, just for the fun of it. I like doing that. Just picking up something to read with no set agenda, no high expectation of earth shattering revelations, just reading.
And what I saw, with fresh eyes, is just how much God enjoys creating. He likes it. He wanted to create and so He did, a lot. I’ve never thought of it that simply before. Oddly, He refers to it as work, valuable, heartfelt work. And yet He also says throughout the scriptures that there is nothing better than enjoying one’s work. How interesting that a God that could simply BE chose instead to CREATE. Creating is a mighty, meaty calling, and I am beginning to believe that we, made in His image, enjoy creating too.
I never used to think this. Creating was for other people, those that were off doing more beautiful things than I. Never mustering more than a “C” in Art class, I believed that creating was not my thing. Now I am a new convert to this creating process: blooming with a new belief that even though I may not have shined like other classmates, I am also not meant to be dull.
I am a parchment paper Momma. For this is how I am branching out creatively. The other night our daughter proposed making homemade pretzels. Homemade pretzels on a Thursday night with a “not very domesticated mother?” It is just these kinds of nudges out of my comfort zone that continually surprise me and delight me as a parent. Why would we make homemade pretzels on a Thursday night? Or more importantly, why shouldn’t we? So, off to Publix we went for the ingredients, and at 35 years, I bought my very first box of parchment paper. It felt a little sacred. For until then, parchment paper was for other people. You know, creative baking types. Behold! I have a parchment paper, people. This is a big deal. We made the pretzels. They turned out pretty well. A couple days later, I tried a cake recipe. It did not turn out well. Yet, for the first time, the fun in the opportunity to create outweighed the reality that it did not taste good. For the first time, I didn’t feel the weight of defeat, I felt the surge that comes with answering the call to create.
I love watching our children align with the call to create. They do it so effortlessly and joyfully. They don’t over-think it or over-analyze. They are rich in their use of colors. They have big plans, even if left with half dried play dough and broken crayons, almost dried out markers and scrap paper.
They have no sense of how their art measures up against that of other people; free to bask in the glory of the process of thinking something and then living it, however they picture it in their minds.
I am getting better at it. Creating beyond the limits that have lived in my brain for too long. Stickers are a safe place to start. I simply adore scrapbooking stickers. I stick them everywhere. Everywhere the call to create takes me. Sometimes I position them however feels right on card stock and I frame it. And I smile. I take a little break, and simply celebrate creation. And then I smile and sigh, contently, because in this moment, I am like my Creator.
Write To The Full 