Month: July 2022

Unfortunately we can easily slip away from our creative identity as we grow older. I want to share with you some keys I believe can help us as adults to unlock our creative potential!

1. Become childlike/remember your childhood

Nasa did a study and found that 98% of 4 to 5 years were creative geniuses. That shouldn’t surprise us because after all we are made in the image of the Creator. I am daily amazed by the creativity of my children. Recently, the girls were playing box car children and I came down and found they had made a stove out of construction paper.

I believe if left alone to their boredom kids are extremely innovative. They can create out of almost nothing!

I also think it’s helpful to reflect on your own childhood. What did you love? I can remember writing and also setting up my stuffed animals in chairs and preaching to them. Sometimes we can unearth our unique creativity gifts when we remember how we were as children.

2. Get free from the fear of man

I am not sure if we can ever reach our creative potential when we live in the fear of man. Creativity is a vulnerable, subjective process and we need to get free in order to truly tap into our potential.

We can all look at a Picasso and have a varying opinion on it. Does our opinion determine whether Picasso was a creative artist? I don’t think so. You are a creative and don’t wait for someone else to tell you whether you are or are not.

3. Be okay with messes and mistakes.

If you want to make great things you have got to be ok with messes and mistake. Have you ever been around a home renovation or new home build?

Messes can always be cleaned up and mistakes are just a part of our humanity! We’ve got to let go and enjoy the process in order to create. Failing is a part of the process of growth.

Perfectionism can really lock up our creative potential – don’t let it!

The world needs our creativity. Go out there and make something great today!

Pretty sure my first year homeschooling taught me more about myself than anyone else. I took a strengths finder test in school of ministry and my top two strengths are strategic achiever. It’s not easy let me tell you. Thankfully the good Lord in His mercy to my family made connector my 3rd strength.

I love a good check list and checking this boxes. Let’s get some stuff done, ya know? If you are into the whole birth order thing, my parents were both first borns and major promotors of independence. I am the youngest, however, Dr Leeman says that it cycles back to first born when there is a 4 year gap. I am 4.5 years younger than my next sibling. Now I can swing youngest when it’s convenient.

Therefore, I love worksheets and checklists and PROGRESS. So this year I learned so much about dialing back my need to achieve as I assessed what the true goal of choosing to homeschool was for us.

I poured over books about unschooling and something inside me came alive as I started to value play, read alouds and exploring. One book was about a family living on farmland in Vermont and I was ready to move by the end of it!

I had to undo a lot of my own mindsets about learning. When I started to study the girls, I quickly realized they are always learning. And my goodness, the questions, they are always asking questions.

We still do phonics which I highly value. When I got to second grade at a new school my teacher to discovered I knew NO phonics. She graciously spent time with me after school to catch me up. We do math and language but our workbooks are not the extent of their education.

It seems after all that I am the one who truly had some lessons to learn. 🙂

I quietly roll over and sneak out of our room carefully avoiding the rolled up blanket taco beside my bed. She slips in each night and settles herself on my sheepskin rug and hard floor. I am undecided as to whether or not to break her of this habit. When I ask her what is scaring her she replies, “I just want to be close to you.” Alas, so I just expect each morning she will be there once again.

These are the days.

I slip down the stairs and steam oat milk and make a cup of coffee to drizzle it over. I sit in silence and feel the warmth of my cup, then I pray, read, journal. I soak up the solitude in the same way I sip my first latte.

These are the days.

With an astonishing “boom, boom, boom” we are aware than one of them is awake. We marvel at how they are so loud when they haven’t even reached 40 lbs yet.

These are the days.

They stumble down the stairs and hope to snuggle up to one of us. They are tiny bodies with huge hair and terrible breath. They burrow in close and ask “what’s for breakfast?”

These are the days.

At 8am, I walk back up the stairs. I open the babies door to the loud roar of her sound machine. She stumbles to her feet and holds the edge of the crib. She happily says “good morning.” And every day I am shocked by her mop of auburn hair. She is another tiny body with big hair ready to greet another day.

These are the days.

There are sweet sister snuggles and sassy sister squabbles. The floor is littered with calico critters. I often here “mom” only to realize they are deep in play land and not calling out to me.

These are the days.

There are times I probe to know more and times I ask them to please stop talking to

me. There are times I miss them and times I just need a break – a moment to gather my thoughts and feelings.

These are the days.

There are read alouds. Sometimes they snuggle and sometimes they squirm. The questions are endless and curiosity ravenous. The little minds like huge sponges.

These are the days.

There is sighs and silence and the clanging of dishes once they are finally in bed. There is my beloved nightly bath accompanied by a good book. There’s requests for cups of water and a collapsing onto the couch. There’s nighttime teas and a sweet satisfaction in knowing –

These are the days.