Month: April 2019

Connecting My Spirituality and Creativity

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The past two days I have set my alarm for 5:30am (though to be honest I snoozed ’till 6) and got up to write for 20 minutes. It’s still dark outside, and no one else in the house is awake. I take our laptop to our office and plug in the charger, as our computer’s battery hardly holds a charge anymore. I open a blank Google doc and begin to write. I’m not writing about anything specific – just writing to write. Writing to learn. Writing to listen.

This early morning practice of writing each day is a recommendation by Janice Elsheimer in her book, The Creative Call. She calls it having an “artist’s daybook.” The term “artist” does not have to imply art in the traditional sense of painting or sculpting – creating in any avenue allows us to call ourselves artists. Here’s why Elsheimer says we should journal in our daybook every morning:

  • To force yourself to have quiet time to hear what God has to say to you
  • To be receptive to God’s guidance in nurturing the artist within us
  • To tap into our unconscious source of creativity
  • To track our growth as an artist, to note what works or doesn’t work

There is a lot of creativity in me that has been sitting dormant for a while. Having a baby, working full-time and going back to graduate school have pressed me for time. (At least, that’s my excuse.) When I’m not having my time taken up by those things, it’s usually a game of catching up on things like laundry, dishes, grocery shopping, and all the other day-to-day kinds of things. I had convinced myself that creative tasks like writing, reading for fun, crocheting, painting, or playing music were activities that I could reward myself with once all the urgent tasks had been completed. The thing is, those “urgent” tasks just never all get done. There always seems to be at least one more dish I could clean, one more room I could vacuum, or one more load of laundry I could do.

Since starting The Creative Call, I have had a shift in my mindset. Elsheimer makes the claim that God created all of us with skills and talents to be creative, and we can use these skills and talents for the work of God. The parts of me that want to be creative and desire to write, read, and paint are God-given.

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Still Running – One Year of Exercising!

Erica2 Comments

Last year in April, I decided to start regularly working out. I have definitely always had an on again/off again relationship with exercising. At the beginning of 2018, I was in an “off again” phase. I had just started grad school towards a Library Science degree, and as it turns out, grad school added a bit of extra stress to my life. (Go figure.) 

I decided to start exercising mainly as a way to cope with stress. I was in the midst of a stressful group project with school, and I was so stressed out that I had literally started losing my hair. Exercise was one of those things that I knew was going to help my mental and physical health, but I had convinced myself I didn’t have the time. I worked full time, I had a young child, I was tired!!! Until one day I just decided I was done with the excuses, and I would just start doing it. (Read more about how I motivated myself to start exercising here.)

I started out running 2-3 times a week – and I surprised myself when I had kept it up for a month, and then two months, and three… I surprised myself even more when I started to look forward to it. (I also surprised myself when I began having major hip and shoulder pain from running… a reminder I’m not as young as I used to be!) 

I told myself if I made it to the year mark, that I would write a post about it: so here it is. 1 year of exercising. 1 year of staying steady with a goal. 1 year of not giving up on something. It feels good.

I did have one major low point in past twelve months about Christmas-time through February. I had gotten a cold and had stopped exercising to recover, and I had just finished a really stressful semester at school, and things in life kind of seemed like they were falling apart for a bit. My energy dropped, and for a few months even when I tried to exercise, it was hard. I had lost progress and speed on my runs, and even just doing a slow jog felt like I was running underwater. I know my mental health was at a low point too – it’s so interesting how our bodies and minds are so intertwined. I really thought this was the point I would give up running.

During this time, I still managed to go on runs, though some of the time it averaged only once a week, and some parts of the run I would just walk. But the point is, I kept going. Really by the end of February I started noticing the runs were getting easier again. The weather started getting warmer, and I was enjoying running outside again.

Today, I went on a run around ACU’s campus – my normal route. From my house and around the trail it’s about a 2.7 mile run. I don’t run it very fast – I average between 9-10 minute miles. I wish I could say that after a year of running, I’ve made some amazing gains in strength or speed, or even my physique. I haven’t really made any of those gains, but I have stayed steady – which I think is also a worthwhile goal. Sometimes that’s the best we can do – and it’s good enough.

I am good enough.