Of 52
Enjoy
Adjective: take delight or pleasure in (an activity or occasion)
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The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing. (Zephaniah 3:17, NIV)
I have always been insecure about my creativity.
In the workplace, I’m usually seen as an independent, self-starting, and reliable employee. Once I get settled into a job position, you can usually find me trying to find the most efficient way to get my tasks done and improve existing systems. My creativity in this sector of my life is confident.
However, when it comes to artistic creativity, I’m almost the complete opposite. It’s like my creativity in structures and systems suddenly shrinks and cowers in a corner when presented with more artistic mediums, like a musical instrument or a paintbrush and a blank canvas. I’m hesitant and even afraid to try.
But, the thing is… I wasn’t always like this.
When I was little, I loved being by myself because I enjoyed the freedom of being able to do whatever I wanted. I could play outside and imagine myself to be anything. Or, I could read a book and then feel inspired to write my own stories about life on different planets. Or, I could tinker with a piano and try to play keys that sounded like how I was feeling in the moment.
There was a time when I was unafraid of exploring creativity, but somewhere along the way, performance and expectations entered the stage and stole much of my joy, replaced it with self-doubt, and covered it with comparison.
At some point, creative expression just wasn’t good enough. At some point, creative expression became something to be measured, evaluated, and judged. At some point, I started to believe in the lie that creativity is only good if it’s functional or if it outperforms someone else.
I have a couple of distinct memories of where the roots of these lies grew deeper, but one that I believe the Holy Spirit has been nudging lately is a memory that happened when I was just barely a teenager.
I was on a mission trip with my church youth group, and near the tail end of the trip, I wrote a song to express everything that I had experienced during the trip. I was both nervous and excited to share my first song with others, so I chose to share the song with someone in our youth group that I trusted and admired.
I quietly whisked her away to an empty room, and I played the song for her. I remember I was shaking because of my nervousness and excitement, and I couldn’t even look at her. But, when I had finished, I peeked over at her, and when my eyes met hers, I found myself staring back at a blank face. As I stared a little longer, I noticed that it was lined with impatience.
This person asked if I was finished, and when I nodded wordlessly, she said that she was busy and had to take care of some logistical things for the trip and got up to leave. I remember feeling embarrassed and even sorry that I had wasted her time.
When I revisit this memory, the feeling of mortification still feels pretty fresh in my heart. But, I feel challenged to work through this. For so many years, I tried to contain and shut in my creativity by convincing myself that I’m not creative or that I have no business in trying to do something creative.
However, when I look back at my life, I see how creativity has been fizzing and popping out of any sort of crevice it could find. I’ve only let it express itself through functionality and efficiency at my workplaces because it could be useful for others and myself. I only let it out if I knew that it would produce something useful.
Living like this has only left me frustrated. In the back of my mind, I knew that I wasn’t letting my creativity be genuine, and that has led me to where I am now. At this point in the journey, I feel like I’m standing at the junction of where fear and desire collide before they are repelled by each other and split off into their own tangents. I have to decide. Do I keep walking with fear, or do I walk the other path?
I am by no means a closet Mozart or Michelangelo. I’m not a creative protege, but I’m starting to see that this doesn’t disqualify me from being creative. After all, what is so wrong with doing something simply for the sake of enjoying it? So what if it’s not functional? So what if what I make doesn’t outshine the sun?
I truly believe that there are some things that we will love and enjoy for our whole lives. There are some things we delight in as a child that we will never outgrow. For me, it could be music. For someone else, it could be baking. For another, it could be building something. If I’m enjoying something for the sake of purely enjoying it, shouldn’t that be enough?
Growing up, I was taught to always present my best to God, and this was reinforced by constant expectations of putting forth high-quality work. Anything less was considered shameful.
I do agree that God deserves our best. We should follow Him wholeheartedly. However, it’s important to remember that we won’t always be at our best. We’ll slip up, and sometimes we’ll hit rock bottom. However, this doesn’t mean that God will withdraw Himself from us. When He demands our everything, it doesn’t mean just our best efforts or material possessions. He also wants us to present the ugly, imperfect, and immature parts of ourselves as well.
I’ve been learning that it’s so important to remember to enjoy the process, no matter what the outcome is, and I believe that God also enjoys this process. After all, He is in the business of refining us and bringing us to glory — His work is all about the process. I doubt that He is impatiently longing for us to become perfect. The work that He does is so beautiful that the process is just as much of a masterpiece as the end result.
So, whatever our schedules look like for this week, I hope that we can all carve out some time and a safe space to experience enjoyment. What is one activity that you just enjoy, even if it’s not considered to be productive? I’m not talking about activities that we use as an escape or that bring harm to ourselves and others.
If enjoyment is something that you haven’t felt for a long while, take some time to sift through your inner workings. Find that inner child, and let them know that it’s okay to come out to explore and play.
We don’t always have to be “productive” in order to be good. Although we are imperfect and living in an imperfect world, there are still things to delight in and enjoy. So, more than perfection, or even progress, let’s find enjoyment in God’s process, knowing that His process is an art form in itself, and we are the artworks that are invited to experience and enjoy His creative movements.
