{what i pray my future looks like}
In my last almost eighteen years of life, the word future has painted a different image in my mind with every new day.
When I was five, I may have told you I wanted to be a ballerina, and at nine, a gymnast. At ten or eleven I wished to be a teacher, and one year later, my response finally found a consistency:
author.
storyteller.
creator.
Don’t get me wrong; this dream is still very much in motion. Look For Me Between These Lines, my first collection of poetry and prose and stories and pictures and everything in between is still a work in progress and still the first published collection in my perfect plan. But my words have also created a sort of domino effect for me, and each idea topples one over the other each day. Today I want my books to be movies and TV shows and social media content and tomorrow I’m looking to create artwork with it and by next wednesday my words will be on sweatshirts.
See, that’s the thing about the arts and the creating. We as artists possess this overflow, this abundance of ideas that spills through our house from every faucet and floods it. And even more so than that, being a daughter and a follower of my own Creator fuels this passion and kickstarts the pursuit and the chasing of my ideas.
I’ve always gotten overwhelmed by them, the ideas, because if I didn’t pursue them each and every day, they seemed to pick up a shovel and begin to bury me alive. Yet now I get excited, as I’ve learned that instead of suffocating I have to hold my breath and dig my way back out. Because while the rest of the world stares out at this planet and sees it as this rotting, dying, decaying thing, I see it as beautiful and full of potential and progress waiting to be made. We all share this pretty little planet, and dying or not, you can’t deny the art and poetry and songs to be birthed from it; the creativity is still an abundance.
So when I say I’m a dreamer, that’s what that means; I’m a creator by nature, and I’m willing to tear this whole world apart stepping into that. While the rest of the world may try to silence my chattering on about the traveling and the writing and the photos and ideas, my Creator is smiling down at me and reminding me that he created me in his own image. He hung each star one by one, and planted flowers and creatures and every freckle sitting on my face is His own design. He encourages these big dreams, these huge projects. He plants the seeds for growth and opportunity in our brains and encourages us every day to chase after them. If you’re willing to listen, you can hear Him cheering us on every day.
That’s what I want to share today. You are so capable. Not only that, you’re equipped with the tools to do everything the Creator put you on this planet to do. Because His plan for you is undeniably good, and real and true and worthy. You’re going to do amazing things.
Never stop creating.