Help me be an artist

So I'm doing this new thing where  I get up 2 mornings a week at 5am and write. 

I wake up to thoughts of worry and deadlines and hustle, my chest already contracting, my mind already in over drive. Do the things. Please the humans. Pay the rent. Write the words.

 Ugh. That last one. Writing. The one that I actually want to do, but feel like I don’t have time for anymore. When did art become so stressful? I hate that pressure and anxiety sit on my chest when I sit down to write, telling me it’s too formal, too casual, too much, not enough.

 I wake up with a desire to create that’s quickly snuffed out by the weight of responsibilities and the lack of time. My rigid schedule is a double-edged sword, keeping me safe & secure but also sliding me along a narrow path with my back against a wall. A schedule brings safety and accountability, but it’s also sort of claustrophobic.

 I feel all of this as I wake up. My eyes still closed. Thoughts looping through my brain as I hang in limbo between sleep and consciousness. Do I wake up now or not? When am I going to write? How do I fit everything in? Am I being too rigid? Why is my soul not still?

 In a perfect world, time would pause. I would sleep until my body is healed and rested. I would spend unlimited time with the Lord. I would write in complete freedom. And then I would work and get everything done in a day. But everything doesn’t get done in a day. I’m learning that.

 So I lay in my new room—my second morning in the Cumberland apartments—and I breathe. I lift my thoughts above the hamster wheel of today’s hustle, even though the anxiety sitting on my chest doesn’t make it easy.

 “Set your mind on things above, not on things of this world,” He says. So I try. I take one more baby step in the direction of “training myself for godliness” and lead my mind to a different perspective. A perspective that isn’t consumed with the day and its worries. Those things don’t matter beyond the moment.

 What does matter is the narrative taking place around us, always, existing outside of time. The narrative of the rattling sound, when the dry bones become a great army. The narrative of the spiritual forces of darkness and light that are waging war. The narrative of sin that chains us up in coffins of ice and desolation. The narrative of Love, of Life, of the Word that exists before and after the earth. The True narrative that I’m a part of is so much greater than today, so much great than myself.

But today also matters. And my part matters. And it’s a cosmic paradox that I don’t pretend to understand. But I sober-mindedly prepare myself for action, train my hands for war, and kneel down to offer the Lord my weakness.

 I sow my seeds in the ground and watch them die. I breathe a sigh of pain and relief. It hurts to suffer, but that is the only way to live. So I sow my seeds in the soil—I work responsibly, I write, I encourage my friends, I follow Jesus, I get to know Him through His Word and share Him with other people—because I have been crucified with Christ, and it’s no longer I who live.

 I wake up and my brain shoots of thoughts of anxiety because it’s forgotten that I’ve been crucified. It forgets that I am hidden with Christ in God. It thinks that my life is still my own. So I wake up and do the hard work of training—again—and telling my soul that I’m free. That’s it’s not about me. That I get to serve and make disciples and love the Lord my God and that’s all.

 So I sit up. I swing my legs out from under my warm, white duvet and onto the beige carpet. I put on the leggings that are laying in a heap by my bed and sleepily stumble to the kitchen. I take my coffee and computer to the blue leather chair in the corner by the window. I turn on my instrumental playlist and just listen for a minute, watching the lazy movement of my white curtains in the morning breeze. I look around my new room that is somehow all gold and white, and I ask the Lord to calm and quiet my soul. And He does. Whether I feel it or not, He does. He will. 

 Even though anxiety comes to talk to me many times during this hour, that’s okay. Because anxiety is not a bad part of myself, but it does need a lot of coaching. So I listen to what it’s trying to tell me, and then remember that, regardless of how I feel, the Lord has calmed and quieted my soul. My day is about Him. My writing is for Him and through Him.

 “All our lives are consumed in possessing struggle but only when the struggle is cherished & directed to a final consummation outside of this life is it of any value. I want to be the best artist it is possible for me to be, under God… Dear God, please help me be an artist, please let it lead to you.” Flannery O’Connor