Made To Create

No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

—Hebrews 12:11

If you were made to create, you won’t feel whole and healthy and alive until you do. My husband is a pianist and songwriter, and you can set a timer by his need to play and create. If it’s been too long, I can feel it in our house, like something gone bad in the refrigerator or a dead mouse in the walls. He was made to play, to sing, to create with sounds and notes and words, and when he doesn’t, he’s not himself.

I know there are some artists who create around the clock, who feel art coursing through their very veins, who can go without sleep and food and human interaction for days while they revel in the rich universe of their own minds. But I think those artists are very rare, or maybe that they’re fibbing. For most of us, it’s hard work, fraught with fear and self-consciousness, and it’s much easier to make dinner or mow the lawn or reply to emails.

Get up. Create like you’re training for a marathon, methodically, day by day. This is your chance to become what you believe deep in your secret heart you might be.