They say it comes in different ways to different people. To artists like Van Gogh and Picasso, to authors like Jack Kerouac. It’s this place where it feels like a blanket of sad lays down on a life. It’s heavy and it’s confusing and it might make you question just about everything, including your self and your gifts. Do you still have anything to offer the world?
Jack Kerouac said, “I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.”
Maybe it’s a place most folks who tend to live life as a “creative” go through. I sat around a table with a few photographers last week and was amazed at how people working creatively in a completely different sphere can experience the same sufferings. Do you have anything worth giving?
Maybe for me, it was the “baby blues” that often come to visit when a new baby’s made an appearance, and they’re so full of joy and the world seems like a big mess. Maybe it’s the state of the nation I live in — looking at things and wondering how the heck this whole mess can get cleaned up, made right. The justice and the love and the mercy — how do we find them and live them? Maybe it was the four months I spent trodding word-by-word through Les Miserables. Maybe it’s trying to figure out how to do all the things I hope to do when there are all the things I need to do. But probably, all these things swirling together with a dash of discouragement and a whisper or two from the enemy of my soul combined to create my own little blue period.
Seems to me that almost every time God whispers something deep and purposeful to my soul, my enemy is likely to come with his own clever ways and ask, “Did God really say?”
So I’ve floundered and failed and fallen short for what feels like ages but is probably more like a good solid handful of months. And I’ve wondered and worried and asked — what about the miserable? What about the racism? The rioting? The troubles nearby? And the ones I know of, so much like these, back in countries I love on opposite sides of the globe?
Do I really have anything worthwhile to say?
Did God really say?
On a beautiful Sunday morning in a community of believers, we sang these old words made new — a hymn from the 1800s, remade for this century:
Earth has no sorrow that heaven can’t heal.
And I remembered those whispers from God’s heart to mine at the beginning of the year. He didn’t ask for the moon or a million prayers or my firstborn.
He certainly didn’t ask me to fix the world’s problems. He just whispered: Faithful. Be faithful.
And this is the truth that is changing the blue to a bright and hope-filled green for me: I can’t heal the world. On our own, We won’t heal the world. But heaven can. And if we’re faithful — if we will faithfully live out the radically counter-cultural love that God calls us to, we’ll pave the way for heaven on earth.
So these are the ways I’m moving forward right now. I’m asking forgiveness for my lazy, hope-less soul, and gratefully receiving new measures of hope, which are my own choice to take after all. And I’m asking, Lord today, today, help me to be faithful.
In a desire to start afresh with an eye toward faithfulness, I’ve created a little reader survey. Just 9 super simple questions, to help me understand what would bless your heart, and help you on your journey toward faithfulness, and ultimately, toward Jesus. I’m hoping to be faithful with the gifts I’ve been given, and to encourage you in yours, too. I hope you precious and dear readers and friends will forgive me for the ways I’ve been unfaithful, and pray for me, as I pray for you, to keep turning to Jesus and finding His will and His way. We will fall short, we will be forgiven, and we will keep going deeper into Him.
Will you please take a moment to take this survey? Your time and your genuine honesty would be a gift to my soul, friend!
I’m excited to start this journey afresh, and praying that in the days to come, it will bless your heart…
Be encouraged today. Earth has NO sorrow heaven can’t heal. And our part in the story? Is faithfulness.
xCC
I create resources to help people find deeper, more meaningful relationships with God through pursuing, pondering, and prayer. The "Shop" link above will take you to the home of many of the lovely resources I’ve created to help you keep walking one day deeper with Jesus.
Thank you! Have been experiencing a blue period too (and not able to express it in creative work). Horrible. The words that popped into my soul one day was ‘it is not your job to save the world’. Reaffirmed through additional conversations and somehow once it finally sunk in was the message that my should needed to hear. My job is to just keep going (with joy). So happy that you are back 🙂