Creativity

Today as I was making my youngest niece's blanket, I watch the older two (Zachary and Ashlynn) use their imagination and created what they called a "Chinese House Tent". It was interesting to see what their minds would come up with. I remember when Zachary was about 1 1/2 years old, we would drive out the road and in the same spot he would say "geen deno" -translation "Green Dino"

As the weeks went on and his vocabulary became more clearer, he would say things like "The green dinosaur is sitting beside me" and until last year, the green dinosaur existed in his mind. Ashlynn would fairies everywhere - can anyone say Tinkerbell overload? But in the past year it seemed to be their imagination was fading away a little - as the aunt, I was sad. I remember growing up and being outside building forts and playing in the woods - coming up with stories and acting them out with the neighborhood kids. I remember walking down the creek with my uncles and cousins and just swinging from a rope - spending time using our minds to figure things out and also to create things.

But this morning when as I began working on Laurie's blanket, I used half of the living room floor. I was waiting for a "Aunt Mimi!" (which by the way, my nieces and nephew call me MiMi)...but instead, they decide to push their work tables together and create a tent. They started grabbing blankets and pillows from everywhere and they created a tent. The propped open one end of the tent which reminded them of chinese - don't know how they came up with it, but that's ok :-)

As I sat there cutting the fringes, they would crawl out of the "window" and grab a storybook which is the TV, then crawl back out again and grabbed a pot from the kitchen because they needed to cook some stuff. They continued to do this for two hours and I became fascinated by their determination to keep playing. Normally, if any of the floor was taking up they would be a little upset and we would have to walk them thru that "it's ok, you have rest of the floor to play in". Instead - they kept saying every once in awhile "Mimi, I would really like a blanket for my birthday" or "That blanket is pretty, I wish I had one" Well, according to my last blog, I already created their blankets for them :-)

As I was cleaning up the scrap materials, the Lord began speaking to me - sometimes we forget to live and to enjoy life - even in those moments where God is using "elbow grease", we still need to enjoy life. We still need have fun - and when we start getting a little wild - the Lord will pull us back. We need to use our minds for creativity - we're all creative, but we're all on different levels of creativity.

Recently, I took a little over a week off at work and I knew it was for rest. I enjoyed the time I had off and met my goal of no schedules, no setting the alarm clock, no errands, etc and it was nice!!! So when I returned back to work, my mind and body was refreshed and rested - and I was welcomed back with my accumulated work that was sitting there, and rather that getting aggravated, my mind started thinking in ways of completing the work in ways that I never would have thought of - when we renew our minds daily and ask for creativity in our life, the Lord will answer. After this week and completing everything that I did, I was amazed at how creative I could be.

I think sometimes when we think "creativity" we think of being artsy - we don't have to be artsy....I think if we start praying for creativity we would be amazed at how things in our life will begin to look different and how those daunting tasks become easier - just maybe? I'm not artsy, but I want to be like my Maker - I want to be creativity!