'You Are Such an Artist Today!'

Potentially the greatest compliment anyone could bestow on me, was truthfully said as if, ‘You have behavioural issues today more than usual!’ A comment like this can break you, if the timing is poignant.  It can also make you steel up and say to yourself, ‘You just don’t get it, do you?’   

On this particular “today”, I was internally wielding the beast of frustration.  Perhaps I was pushing a point too persistently and wanting a deeper level of achievement.  Why?  Because for weeks I had buried myself in tasks - all good and for the benefit of others – but I had forsaken the very creative impulses that made me an artist.  We are not our better selves when we deny our core design.  And many of us live with this cultural misunderstanding, sometimes daily.

What is it to be an artist?  I observe life.  I experience it.  I interpret and I express it in art form - and no art form is off limits.  I write character dialogue, descriptive prose, dense poetry or lively lyrics.  I sing, play guitar and dance, meanwhile emoting dramatically and/or comically.  I’ve created film, choreography, and drawings; acted and dared to dream.  Why?  Because I must.  Why?  Because God made me to.   

You are responsible for your own sanity.  It is not for anyone else to say what kind of artist you are, or whether you should even be one, or how one acts.  We all live with the mantel of being Christ-like, no matter what our role.  As long as our focus is on our Maker, and our heart is right before Him, what else matters? 

If you’ve been called an artist; an artsy-fartsy waste-of-space; a head-in-the-clouds good-for-nothing, put it in the too hard basket and hand it over to God.  You don’t need it and you certainly shouldn’t carry it around with you.  It gets in like poison, like it’s written on your skin, seeping into the bloodstream, with aim to taint the heart and brain.  Rub it out and don’t let it in.  How can we serve our God if we are so broken, we default to curling position?  What can we see from that angle except pain?     

I’ve also been labelled “temperamental”.  Again, it felt unjust.  Why?  Because I knew it meant misunderstanding – more of it – and always from your closest people.  Forgiveness is my garment.  I’m not interested in accumulating offence – it cripples inspiration, bringing death not life.   Why?  God breathes in, so as I breathe out. 

I used to be suspicious when called “special” – special as in weird.  Still, this is me years ago.  These days, I can’t see myself any other way.  Yes let me be seen as temperamentally special, if that means I am understood as artist.  I am an artist through and through - I always was and always will be.  God has placed a swath of melody in my soul.  He’s given me a language-impulsive brain and a heart for movement and drama potential.     

Don’t develop a thick-skin or you lose sensitivity.  Do learn to filter.  Words said are powerful, but only if we believe them, and what is untrue, we cannot afford to believe.  We let God down when we deny our artistic nature and believe the lies.  May I say we offend Him, wound Him even, by rejecting the very nature he custom-crafted from His own artist’s hands.  Do not fall into the same trap that ensnarled Adam and Eve. Beware hidden motives.

Why did God make me?  To love me.  What is my purpose?  To love others.  How do I do that?  By giving the world what God gave me to give – my artistry.