I am creative. I have a mind that wanders. I daydream. And one day, somehow, my creative genius will explode into full being and will make me become who I was designed to be. I will write novels as an uncontrollable flow of amazing stories spills forth from my brain, my house will be stunningly welcoming and tidy, my body will be slim and glowing with health, and I will be at peace with myself and all those around me. Discipline? Pah! That's just for people who operate that way. I wasn't designed that way. That's not how I work.
Why, then, does God keep challenging me about this? Why is it that last weekend in both sermons, morning and evening services, did He speak so clearly to me about this one word that I would pretend isn't even part of my language, let alone my comprehension? Because discipline, perhaps the one part of me that I know requires the most work, is what it will take to be who I was made to be. To produce those astounding stories, to have a house that is welcoming and manageable, and to be healthy, requires discipline. I have just managed to convince myself that I am a personality designed to operate without discipline.
At the evening service the curate gave the sermon on Genesis 1:26-2:3, focusing on God's plan. None of this world, none of us, not you nor me, was made by chance. God planned it all from the outset, and His creation was meticulous, His natural world works just how it was meant to. Yet look at it, so amazing, so stunningly beautiful - only the most amazing artist could create such beauty. What? More creative than any other and disciplined? And we were made in God's image, which means...?
To fulfil my potential as a creative writer, and all those other aspects of my life, I now recognise that I need to be disciplined. Our curate is an artist, which is what he trained in before he turned to theology, and he still produces stunning work. What helps me is that he struggles like I do, that he has realised over time that he needs to inject discipline into his life in order to make things run smoothly in his work. Admin is the task he finds hardest, but he's found that, rather than letting it slide because he's "creative" and it's ok to ignore the "boring" stuff, that if he takes control of that aspect of his life and works at it, his filing system and organisation has improved.
He described it to me in a way I hadn't thought of before. Organisation and precision is something that really irritates me about other people. And that's because it is an aspect of God that I have ignored, that I have tried to live without. In order for my creativeness to flourish I need to have that tempered more deliberate side to my life. And it takes work. It is difficult. But life isn't easy, and if it were, where would the great successes come from?
I'm not trying to say, and neither do I believe God is, or indeed our curate, that people aren't different. There will always be people who are naturally organised and keep things running down to the finest detail. There will always be people who lose themselves in their creativity and who seem to enter a different world of their own in the deepest throes of their work (I forget to eat when I'm writing fiction!) But it seems to me, as I get older, that one doesn't completely work without the other.
What was said to me on Sunday, and what God has been prompting me with recently in all the different ways He speaks to me, shows that this area of my life can't be ignored any more and seriously needs some work. But I don't have to do it alone. He's in this with me, guiding me, showing me how, continuing to shape me to fulfil my purpose for Him on this earth.
Discipline won't make my life perfect, but it does allow me to be free. I always thought it meant being a slave to the boring, the routine. Yet it will actually allow me to be who I'm meant to be.
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