In one of her books, Madeleine L’Engle makes reference to this idea often: it is the nature of love to create. I think about it and how so many of my greatest ideas or creations have been the result of some form of love; not just romantic, but also adoration for the Lord or a love for my friends or people. Two weeks ago I wrote a blog entry in which I said,
This song makes me want to paint him a million songs, make him a million glittery greeting cards, write his name on a piece of paper and draw a million hearts, paint him a million pictures, write him a million songs, and learn how to fly so I can give them all to him.
See it there, that desire to create?
I was reading in a book called The Gospel According to Jesus (which I will review soon!) and in it, Chris Seay warns,
…”worship only God and simply love everyone else. A fine line can be crossed between loving something or someone and that love turning into obsession.”
Scary. Convicting. So I decided to just walk away from this little infatuation I’ve been nursing. If you’ll remember, I wrote an entire post trying to get a boy to fall in love with me. I didn’t write it down and can’t remember it, but concerning the same thing, Seay said to evaluate what you stay up at night worried you’ll never acquire or lose, and there’s an idol. Pastor Matt says something along the lines of “if there’s something you gotta have, and that something ain’t Jesus, then you need to re-evaluate.” After I decided to ask God to help me tame this beast, he gave me some tools and reasons for really working on this aspect of my life.
How. Ever. It’s interesting to see the depths of what I’ve been treating as a shallow, silly little crush. It’s proving to be a difficult process. But it’s worth it, or at least will be worth it.
In the mean time, I’ve got a lot of emotions that are messy and all over and need to be dealt with. So I have been making more things. Remember how I was leaving little felt flowers everywhere I went? Welcome to Arts and Crafts While I Figure Things Out with Stephanie.
I’m grateful for the likes of Sarah Jane, Gretchen and Hannah who have been great friends to me as I sort all of this out. There’s obviously more to it, but that’s the treasure of friendship 🙂
Arts and Crafts While I Figure Things Out! Love the name! The crafts are adorable, and good luck figuring!
Gosh, it’s so easy to get caught up in our emotional worlds and forget that this kind of behavior can be just as dangerous for us as explicit sinning. I know I have been guilty of obsessing over men. And especially over deadlines and school… those things keep me up at night. It’s good to hear this is a problem.. it’s reassuring me of something I already know, but don’t want to admit.
Crafts are awesome. My Christmas break is going to be so filled with crafts my blog is going to look like oneprettything.com.