That wasn't the first time I'd heard those words. They flitted through my head every now and then only to be promptly swatted down by the louder, more insistent voice of self-doubt. This time, however, they were coming quite matter-of-factly and completely out of the blue from the mouth of my husband.
"And what should I put on this blog?" I asked.
"Whatever you want."
So I did what any self-respecting 20-something female living in 2019 would do: I thought about it for 48 hours and then created an Instagram poll. The fact that you're now reading these words should be indication enough of its results.
In addition to asking my beloved Instagram community whether they would ever read my blog, I also wanted to know what they wanted to read. My husband may have been insisting that this was just for me and nobody ever had to read it, but let's be honest: all creatives make with an audience in mind. You have to give the people what they want. And the people came through for me. The results showed enthusiastic interest in a number of areas of my life–people wanted to know what I was writing, cooking, reading, and thinking. Quite a range!
As I reflected on how I could tie these loves of mine together, however, I saw one key commonality: each category was in some way connected to the idea of making. The creative aspect of writing is self-evident, and all writers find their souls enriched by encountering the art of others. Although I myself rarely act as the inspiring artist in the area of cooking (Tieghan Gerard I am not), I still love to make meals, for I see in the act of making dinner a deeper and more sacred venture–the art of making a home. Even thinking, which can sometimes seem to conflict with taking action, can be a form of making, for it allows a perceptive mind to make sense of a world that often seems senseless.
Though I have never crafted a clay mug or sewn anything more complicated than a pair of pants in 7th grade home ec, I have nevertheless been engaged, as all humans should be in some capacity, in many kinds of making. That creative instinct is indeed at the heart of our humanity. Made as we are in the image of our Creator, we cannot help endeavoring to create something. While we are powerless to create ex nihilo, we are still capable of taking the raw materials of our broken world and, in echoes of God's own redemptive work, refashioning it into something of great beauty and value that points to the One who has shaped all reality with nothing more than His voice.
What a great privilege is ours, to speak into the desolate landscape of this life and, with little more than our own words and that indefatigable spark of creativity, to shape little worlds of our own. My world may be small, but I believe that in sharing it, I may somehow shape yours.