Worth It

I’m a creative. I see, I know, I believe I’m an artist. But diving into art—writing, singing, playing music, painting, dancing, learning the Spanish language, creating lesson plans—takes effort. It takes discipline. It takes dedication. It takes belief that my art is worth something.

I want everything to be easy, quick, effortless. I am a product of this age of distraction and instant gratification. I am a millennial. And I know full well I’m not alone. I want a lesson plan to take two seconds so I can go back to watching Netflix; I want to be fluent in Spanish but when I can’t seem to spit out even a sentence to Ethelvina, I retreat to my room and browse Facebook; I put down my guitar when I can’t get a song to sound right and I haven't unpacked my watercolors, even though there have been times I've wanted to paint. 

My free time often feels wasted. I love it, dearly, but it often doesn’t reflect what I value, or at least it doesn’t show that I believe my artistic interests and pursuits are worth much.

The word “freedom” continues to bounce around in my head, and one thing I’m beginning to realize is that true freedom flows out of a life of discipline, intention, effort, and dedication. Experiencing real freedom doesn’t happen when you do whatever you feel like doing, but when you choose to do the things that are difficult but worth something to your soul.

The things I listed in the first paragraph—those are some of my soul-filled activities. And if we’re choosing to do soul-filled activities, if we begin pouring our lives into those soul-filled activities, then we’re doing something that matters to us. And if we’re doing something that matters to us, then I’m pretty sure we’re doing something that could matter to the world around us.

Why is this so difficult?

It’s because we exchange faith for fear.

We don’t really believe our artistic endeavors can influence, can inspire, can change us, can serve others. And we give up too fast, right before we got it—right before the right Spanish word comes to us, right before we nail that chorus, right before we get the Salsa steps down, right before that brilliant idea for a lesson activity pops into our head. We give up. We say we can’t. We say it doesn’t matter. We watch Netflix and we compare ourselves to our friends on Facebook who are doing things better than we can, or so we convince ourselves. We glare enviously at the person who is doing that thing we so desperately want to do too and we declare ourselves incapable, not talented, insignificant. We say the words “never” and “I can’t” and “Who cares?” and all those other poisonous words that slowly kill our souls. And then our beaten souls wander around dejected instead of emanating life and hope and joy and love and all those wonderful things our souls were specifically created to exude.

What if we started telling ourselves that the things we long to do, the things that excite us and move us and show us a path to serving people, are actually worth a great deal? What if we only saw our art—all our art—as good and valuable and inspiring? What if we kept believing we’d reach the heights we want to if we just kept putting in the effort, kept disciplining ourselves to make time for it, kept trusting that the Spirit within us is moving and working and shaping our life and our art? What if we exchanged our fear for faith again?

Maybe we'd once again see it's all worth it.