Cultivate your Creativity

If you aren't being creative, you aren't fully alive.

Too strong a statement?  I don't think so.

During those mind numbing days of preschoolers, poopy pants, and perpetual laundry, I absolutely had to be creative at least some of the time or I would have lost my mind.

My creativity then took many forms, including but not limited to the following:

• I planned elaborate (but extremely low budget) birthday parties.
• I wrote my own curriculum for the church youth group I led.
• I painted murals on my kids bedroom walls.
• I cooked.
• I scrap booked.
• I found joy in stretching our budget as far as it could go.

  

  Image courtesy of David Castillo / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

My kids were (and still are) creative too.  I remember the first time Oldest Girl painted.  She stood at the easel with her little smock on holding tightly to the paintbrush as she hesitantly brushed some paint on the paper. 

Then she noticed that some paint had dripped on to her hand.  She immediately had to stop and go wash her hands.

It wasn't long before she got more paint on her hands.  Again she washed.

The third time she noticed paint on her hands she stopped and stared at her hands.  

She thought for a bit looking from her paint splattered hands to the paint brush to the paper.

Then she took the brush and proceeded to paint her hands, both of them.  Then she put hand prints all over the paper and proudly showed me her creation.

Oldest girl had it right.  Sometimes creativity means letting go of your expectations.  Sometimes it means getting messy.  Sometimes it means joy.

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This post was inspired by reading The Modern Mrs. Darcy's post “Unused Creativity Isn’t Benign. It Metastasizes.”