It started when I was struck unexpectedly one day while driving with heaviness, distraught anger and disgusted by the crude, fowl, insulting injustice that anyone could say or make claim that forms of honest true natural self-expression God could be against. God is the most self-expressing being there ever was, is, and will ever be. He is not only the poster-guy, biggest fan, soccer mom, coach, alumni, mvp, shall I go on?
How dare anything hold back or limit His image, by speaking to those made in it, that is is against His will.
I think about my need for self-expression, about how I’m constantly faced with having to push on past fear of failure and rejection, screw perfectionism, and risk, out of my passionate hungering need to pour myself out, louder, higher, brighter, excessively, strenuously. Like I have to, it’s against my being not to keep expanding. Like depriving such a vast part of myself life. A part that pours out revelation of the glory, beauty, divinity, purity, understanding of God.
Every person has something beautiful to be expressed through them that only they can, whether it be words that are short and few, packed with power wrapped in the strings of years of pursuing humility, fighting, living, breathing, seeing a brighter day. Or it’s making clocks, kites, pictures, sounds, smells. Being inventive, innovative, being inspired and building off of success to breathe more life to the world.
We've all been personally impacted by something someone has made.
We've all been personally impacted by something someone has made.
I think about what inspires me, when I hear a song, or see someone play an instrument through their heart, how I feel I can’t breathe all of a sudden and if I don’t release something of myself in response I’ll explode or suppress the notions of my own heart to answer back.
Creativity breathes creativity. Birthed life sent out, an invitation and message to do it again.
I stumble trying to find words to describe what I mean, but it's like a breath being passed on, growing in momentum. Hang with me, we’re all created with a need to birth something, to bring out the inner deepest most intimate parts of us, and let them be known. And it must be because we’re designed to be known. And we wouldn’t be given a desire if it wasn’t destined to be fulfilled, (-someone wise recently reminded me.)
How beautiful that no matter how scary, messed up, old, raw, different, out of the ordinary it is that this thing, this need to express is, we still make every effort to get it out. Whether it be through mustering up words, or movement across a stage. We crave to outpour our inner-most beings, and have it be grasped, understood, appreciated, cherished, loved. We want to captivate with what captivates us, and be known as we release it. The life, the questioning, the child, the curious, the hungering, the tortured, the sad, the power, the hope, the Heaven in us.
And we risk, get applauded, burned, ignored, overlooked, passed by.But it is all seen. I can promise you that. (start by reading Psalm 139.)
I believe life is just one colossal profound unending encounter with God, and that is the lens I live through every day. Why do you think He made trees, people, life's riddles, a man's hearty chuckle, animals, the ocean, YOU. (Discovering you is discovering so much of Him. A topic for later.)
So my friend, you were made to express, and not hold back. Self-expression at it's purest, yielding, most vulnerable, is an encounter with God.
And the result, it drives out limitation, fear and performance.
And it is these things in it's multiplying form. Inspiration. Hope. Passion.
And we risk, get applauded, burned, ignored, overlooked, passed by.But it is all seen. I can promise you that. (start by reading Psalm 139.)
I believe life is just one colossal profound unending encounter with God, and that is the lens I live through every day. Why do you think He made trees, people, life's riddles, a man's hearty chuckle, animals, the ocean, YOU. (Discovering you is discovering so much of Him. A topic for later.)
So my friend, you were made to express, and not hold back. Self-expression at it's purest, yielding, most vulnerable, is an encounter with God.
And the result, it drives out limitation, fear and performance.
And it is these things in it's multiplying form. Inspiration. Hope. Passion.
And I’m left at the end trails of my thoughts for now with,
-"What would a fully expressed life look like?"
Parting advice:
-It doesn't have to look like what example: "Allie normally does."
-It's not ______'s thing. It's a gift. And it's a never ending supply. And there's more than enough to be accessed, and it will look completely different through you.
-No it's not dumb.
-Because people don't understand does not mean you should stop or it's bad. If it brings you life, do not deprive yourself of it.
-It is irrelevant if you think someone is better. You are still enough. And you don't get to decide you're not.
-Be more afraid of not than the unknown result. -You don't have to be the best. Just be you.
-You are loved unconditionally, worth the same before and after, and accepted regardless of if you did it while juggling pancakes on top of an elephant
-Just say "yes." That's always a good start and step in the right direction.
-You're going to kill it. And I believe in you and celebrate you.
