Have you ever been in a creative rut? Maybe you don’t think you are a creative person, but you just can’t figure out where to go next. I started out the year in bit of a funk, unsure where to go and what to focus on. My sister gave me the book Courageous Creative by Jenny Randle and it is awesome. It’s “a 31-day interactive devotional” meant to jump start your creative brain in just 5-7 minutes a day.
Creativity is for kids, adults do art
Children are so creative. Almost all day everyday is full of imagination and curiosity in a child’s mind. As we grow up, we learn the rules of “good art” and try to fit within the rules. Creativity and imagination are lost as we grow up. Even “artists” and “crafters” who make their life being creative, often put down their creativity to be adults. As we get older, self-doubt takes over and we try to fit in. But why? Yes, we need to be responsible adults that pay our bills, feed our pets, and clean our houses while maintaining friends and family relationships. Life doesn’t just have to be responsibilities and serious goals.
We were created to create.
God gave children the power to build worlds in their heads. Why would he expect adults to live inside the rules humans have established? Courageous Creative is about bringing fun back into our adult life with God’s blessing and guidance. It has fun assignments like taking a photograph based on a word or emotion, using the tips from a professional, coloring one of the gorgeously detailed coloring pages in the book, or taking a short walk while letting your mind wander. A few times she asks us to think about who we know that is struggling and how our unique creativity can help them, whether by writing a silly rap, designing a card to send them, or just calling them to say we care.
Everyone is creative.
You may not think of yourself as creative, or maybe you know a numbers or science brained person who doesn’t have time for art, but Jenny Randle has some interesting lists and stories about things you may not know are creative. She says her job as a video-editor needed a lot of creativity, just like her marketing job. She also has a list of other creative things like being skilled enough at communication to make the Gospel interesting to people, making up silly songs, photography, interior design, scrapbooking, organizing, planning a science experiment, as well as painting and drawing. I would add budgeting and cooking to that list. There are endless ways to be creative, but adults often don’t take as many imaginative leaps as kids.
God has big plans we might not see.
Going through this book and doing the assignments sparked a lot of fun ideas in my head. I’ve been going through a creative funk, overthinking everything and not doing anything. This book reminded me that doing fun things for the fun of it is fine. I don’t need to do things that are good enough to brag about. Sometimes challenging myself to take a random photograph based on a word can get my mind out of my problem and show me a different way to look at the problem, with a somewhat creative solution.
Even if you love your non-creative job, arts and crafts can be a great way to unwind or take your mind off a problem you can’t figure out.
This book was also cool in that it reminded me to bring God into my creative projects. Praying for God’s help in my projects can allow God to guide the project. Maybe it’s not as you originally planned it, but it is exactly what someone else needed to see to remember God’s love.
Here is a link to the book if you want to try it for yourself or give it to a friend.
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