Love--a Motivator for Creativity
Hola beloveds,Welcome back to my cozy corner of the internets & Happy Valentine's Day!!!! 💕💕💕I don’t know about you, but this February kind of feels as if it is going a wee bit fast. February is one of my absolute favorite months. I know that Christmas and Thanksgiving get a lot of hype--as they should. But, I don’t think we give enough credit to the other months with equally pertinent holidays to the human experience. During the months of Thanksgiving and Christmas, we spend so much time with our families, cooking, preparing, buying, and practicing gratitude, however, February the month of love--all kinds of love, is the motivator for the Christmases and the Thanksgivings where joy and thankfulness are the culmination of this one word.As someone who loves love and as a person with creative passions and hope and desires, I find love to be the ultimate motivator in terms of creation--in creativity. Over the years, I have come to an understanding of this word--love. What it means? What it looks like? How to show it better to myself and to those around me.When I talk about my faith and my story to people I’ve just met or only met a few times, I almost always begin with, “I feel like my life runs on the theme of love. ” Just like in any story, the main character has a theme, one grounding theme that supports the rest of the unfolding mystery of their life. For me, that was and is love. As an enneagram six, someone who has the proclivity to worry when there is no balance or security, I have found myself worrying about love. In my pre-teen and teen years, I didn’t feel deserving of it, whether that be from my family or especially from God. During that time, poetry became increasingly more potent in my walk of faith, in self-discovery, and in love. I wrote love poems, re-read my favorite love poems and poets, and daydreamed about love. During that time, I would read my Bible often and my absolute favorite book to read was Psalm. I could devour the words of the Psalmist and everything within me resonated with the heart of David, the writer of the book. My poetry began to reflect the Psalms of David and that’s when it hit me; God likes it when I write poetry. The act of writing became personal to me, this was before Instagram poetry. Before the hype of poets who placed their innermost thoughts on the internet where thousands, if not millions of people would smile in resonation with the writer, that this pain was also their own. When my pen would hit paper, everything made sense to me. Love was palpable and I could, in tiny intricate ways, feel the way Abba God’s heart beat for me. Those first moments of poetic creativity and tender moments with God were almost 10 years ago. Now, as a twenty-something, poetry has changed a bit from those moments of written prayer on the floor of my room into poems written on my phone or in haste on scraps of papers. Now, I have to make time for intentional creativity. In these current moments of life, I have to still the noise clawing for my soul, pull out a notebook and a pen and write with God. There are times where I need to pull words from a place deep within me and remind myself of what love looks like, what it feels, like and how real it is.
~Love ~ Creativity ~
February for me is a remembrance, a reckoning, a happening of all that love has been, all that love is, and all that love can be. I still love love just as much as I did when I was 16, unraveling it on the floor of my room, my heart roving the pages written by a poet who called himself a ‘man after God’s own heart.” It was in those moments BELOVED became my name. This month transcends what we want love to be. It's more than romance--although romantic love that sustains the test of time matters. However, February is magical and full of grace for those of us who are still unraveling love. This month is full of expectancy and joy for the ones who choose to seek out love in the most unexpected of places.
Sincerely, a girl in love with love
~ Antavia
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