Creativity requires space. Whether you are doing the creating or you want to give God room to make some changes in your life.

If you don’t make space for something to grow, much like in a garden, you are choking the life out of anything that strives to develop.

I have spent so much of my life working long hours that I have had to make small spaces for things, outside work, to grow. Furthermore, too often the space is so small that what grows is small and not well nourished. It becomes stunted.

I have worshiped so long and hard at the feet of the great “Work” god that my writing, ministry, family and friends have all suffered. When I have rare times, like now, to allow space for these other things to grow I am astonished at how hungry each are for attention.

Having not allowed each of these others to enrich the soil of my compassionate and creative garden they each vie for new fertile ground; stretching for the sunlight and spreading their branches to gasp for fresh creative air.

I have read countless articles and books that expound on how to make the life of your dreams. All have had many great concepts about how to best do this. However, if you don’t make space for something new to grow nothing ever will.

It’s not that having a strong work ethic is not a good thing. However, if it is our only creative outlet then we tend to get far too tied to it and it begins to define us. Thus, when things change (which they always do) we can be left wondering what happened, what did we do wrong, when it is often just the flow of business. Life happens while we are busy making other plans.

As I have written about before, I believe we all have an occupation and a vocation. The thing we do and the thing we are called to do, and if they can be one in the same, all the better.

Regardless, if your occupation does not (in some way) line up with your calling then you are going to find that you do not feel fulfilled, something is missing. Until I realized that I must have an element of compassion and creativity in all I do, I would get frustrated when my job became repetitive. I would start to lose interest.

Once I learned that I must seek to be compassionate and creative in all I do, and I made a point to infuse that in all elements of my life, that I could find sustainable interest in all that I do.

Creating space in my life for me to be compassionate and creative opened other avenues for these elements to be utilized. Creating space, attracted possibilities, allowing for even more chances for me to be compassionate and creative.

Opening ourselves to the possibilities of what’s out there, I believe, makes anything possible. It is when we close ourselves off and focus too intently upon a single given aspect that we shut the door to other possibilities.

Create a space for change and then select something you want to change, improve or make a passion in your life. Then spend this time nurturing this new element. Give it a chance to grow organically. Don’t force it. Give it the wings to become what it is meant to be an extension of who you are.

This is how my writing grew. From a small seed and when I am able to give it free reign and allow it to happen I truly love writing. It is not forced and it flows freely. It is an extension of who I am. In fact it is a whole different part of who I am, a greater part of who I am.

But space has to be created to allow it to happen…