3 Ways To Find Your Creative Calling
Updated: Nov 23, 2021
When we are called to create something, your education, cultural background, or work experience doesn’t matter. If you have a gift inside of you, your job is to pursue it, keep being curious about it and just take one step forward whenever you can.
I am currently writing my second book about following your creative calling and I had some insights that I wanted to share for those of us who feel that we aren’t ready to take that step or think that we are unworthy of following what God placed inside of us. What should we do when we are called to create, but we don’t know where to start ?
Here are 3 ways to help you get started in your creative journey:
Start with where you are
John Bunyan, author of “The Pilgrim’s Progress”, started writing his book when he was in jail. He was someone who had very little education, but he didn't let that stop him. The book went on to sell over 250 million copies.
Bunyan’s story shows that despite what is going on around us, we can start right where we are, despite our external circumstances. A prison cell is just 4 walls blocking us from the outside world. How many of us have built four walls around our creative calling and told ourselves that we can’t explore it, because we don’t have the right educational background or we aren’t in the best location to get started ?
What if instead of focusing on where we currently are, we were to shift our focus and look at what we can do?
2. Stop worrying about the details
There is a huge reason why sometimes we get an idea and we don’t know or understand all of the details or know everything we’ll need to create ahead of the journey. If we were given the whole blueprint at the beginning of everything we ever did, we'd be overwhelmed.
Think of your creative calling, like an online order that you’re getting ready to receive. The delivery company will give us our tracking number, and we’ll get notifications from the time it’s picked from the warehouse, to the time it leaves, to when your order gets delivered to a second location, to when it’s transferred, and then finally the final destination, in our homes and in our hands.
Now as someone who used to work in customer service and had to track deliveries for customers, I would occasionally get calls from clients who wanted to know exactly where there order was and if it got lost when their purchase didn’t arrive on time. They wanted to make sure that it would be put right on track and sent to them. My job as a customer service agent behind the scenes was to do that research and get them that information. The little details and what I found out while trying to help them rarely mattered, and it wasn’t important. They just wanted reassurance that their product would arrive.
If delivery companies put in every single detail in the tracking information, like the name of your driver, which stop it was at, or if the package was being squashed by other packages in the delivery van, you’d probably feel overwhelmed with all the unnecessary notifications sent to your phone or email. There's a good reason why we don't know everything ahead of the journey.
In the very beginning of your journey, you may have an idea of where you’ll end up, but if you were given the vision and plan of everything that was going to happen in between, would you be ready to handle the details ?
In the book of Exodus, Moses certainly wasn’t ready, and God knew that. This was why He only gave him the instructions he needed when he was told about his calling to guide the Israelites out of slavery and out of Egypt. And when Moses still doubted and asked “ What if I can't do it?” God pointed to the walking stick in his hand. That walking stick, which was used to help him guide his sheep as a Shepherd in his day job, would eventually be used to part the Red Sea and to fight battles later in his journey. Of course, Moses did not know all that was to come, all he knew was that he had something to start with. What he started with was a relationship with God and a rod.
3. Be still and keep moving
When we are able to shift our focus from where we are and what we can’t do to what we can do with what we have, the creative process starts to look a little easier.
Prior to me being 24 000 words deep into my second book, the idea for the concept came to me around the fall of 2020. A huge bible verse that kept popping up on my social media platforms, in my bible studies, and any answers to my prayers was:
“Be still and know that I am God” Exodus 14:14
When I first saw it, I had absolutely no idea what that meant. What I’ve come to understand about it now is that “being still” does not require us to not do anything for long periods of time, nor does it mean that we are stuck. What it means is that we have to keep moving forward, even when everything appears to be working against you on the outside, know that the battle is being fought for you behind the scenes.
Right before Moses and the Israelites were about to leave a life of slavery in Egypt behind, they were being chased by the Egyptians, who wanted them back as their slaves, they found themselves in front of the Red Sea. With the Red Sea in front of them, and the Egyptians behind them, they didn’t like what they saw. And in that moment, when it appeared like they ran out of options, Moses cried out to God, and God instructed him to use his walking stick, and their obstacle was removed.
Those two words “ Be still” at that time in my life were instructions to keep moving forward whenever someone would try to work against me in my day job or when I was at a creative standstill. And so when all of us are in a period of stillness, it’s up to us to look at what we have, with where we are and to keep asking God to help us. The answer may not be so obvious at first, but eventually the obstacles and whatever else hinders us from pursuing our creativity are removed and we too can step forward.
Have you found your creative calling? What steps have you taken to get started?
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