When your creativity has dried up.

I’ve been in a rut.

It’s been three months since I was inspired to blog. I mean, I’ve had ideas and jotted down topics–I even finished one and posted it! But it ended up being deleted because no matter how many times I read over it and opened it to edit, the post just wouldn’t come together. It’s been at least a year since God gave me a new song–and months between that one and the previous one. And my fictional writing? Last week I began re-writing the four-book series I wrote between ages thirteen and seventeen . . . and got stuck on the first page. Poetry is long since gone. Blogging is what I want to pour my heart into, and nothing has come together.

I have this desperate desire to create, to compose something, and my heart has been broken because I feel dried up and uninspired. I see other people whose lives seem so put together. True story: today I was dejectedly stalking a Facebook friend who seems to have everything going for her. Photography, small business, perfect little family, perfect Instagram feed, writes beautiful things. It’s all there. And there I sat moping because my life doesn’t look like hers: because I’m not making things and she is.

Maybe it’s because of my personality that I want to create things. I’ve always wanted to, although not until a few years ago I could actually describe that to you. As a child, I wanted to make events and communities with my stuffed animals and Barbies. As a young preteen I loved playing ZooTycoon on the computer because I could move things around and make the zoo what I wanted it to be. At twelve, I started writing poetry. At thirteen, I wrote my first song “Discovery” and have written more than thirty since then. Also around thirteen was when I began my first fantasy-fictional series called The Daybreak Series, and a few years later wrote a seven-book series of shorter books called Jaelynn’s Journey. I’ve kept diaries since I was seven. (That adds up to more than twenty journals by the way.) While I’ve never been very good at drawing, painting, and the like, words have been my way to both view and describe the world. I LOVE TO CREATE.

And I haven’t been able to.

Not only have I been uninspired, but I feel like my outlets to create and organize have been handicapped. Our apartment doesn’t have a piano. (I’m also 99% sure our neighbors would hate us if we did.) My laptop is a little slow. Church was an enormous part of my creative outlet: I made the weekly PowerPoint scrolling announcements. I sometimes helped lead worship or played an instrument. I came up with songs for children to learn, and made up games and herded wild children. None of this is meant to be read as bragging. I praise God for what He allowed me to do while at that church. In the same breath, I praise Him for bringing me to the church we are at now. But it’s a different church with different people. We couldn’t fly in with a dramatic whoosh and say, “We’ll take over from here!” That’s not how God works. Right now, God doesn’t want me organizing church events and details. As hard as it is for me to remember that, I must.

So, if I am trying to trust God about where He has me and the lack of creative outlets I seem to have, and if I am uninspired to write even a little, what do I do?

My husband told me moments before I began typing this post, “Just write about not being able to write! Be raw! Sometimes it’s not about having the clever titles or cool blog name. Just be raw.” That’s what this is. I don’t have an answer to the question, “What do I do?” because that’s the question I’ve been asking myself for weeks.

This post doesn’t have a goal in mind. There are no alliterated points, no step-by-step process on how to re-inspire yourself. This is just the author of this blog showing you a little of her heart.

I guess, the only answer I can come up with is to wait, to trust, and not stop trying. I’ll open up my laptop every chance I get and open a new Google document or blog post. I’ll sit down with my journal at night and write at least what I did that day. I’ll pull out my guitar and sing old songs I’ve written or worship songs written by someone else. I’ll trust the One Who gave me this desire to create to eventually open doors of creative outlets again, trust Him to inspire me again. Maybe I’ll do a blog post on the little nuggets He’s been giving me in my mornings devotions. Who knows what you’ll see on this blog next?

Keep trekking, creative friend. God has given us our desire to make things for a reason.

“He hath made everything beautiful in His time…” Ecc. 3:11