wear your passion

xoxoxoxo

"Life is about the people you meet and the things you create with them, so go out and start creating. Live your dream, and wear your passion." That's the part that really challenged me for today. Moving back to the city where I grew up after being away for about six years (minus summers home) I'm wondering where I fit. Not that I have ever felt completely at home in my city of origin, but now I do feel like I've grown into a place of realizing I can make an effort to make it more like home. Even if I don't settle down here, I have this chance, whether it's a few days, a few months, a few years...to do something that is lasting and beneficial.

So this is the stepping out of my own box challenge that I'm giving myself--

I am going to search out the art community here and find a way to start creating alongside them . I think there is something inside of me that will come alive as I take that risk and make that effort. I want to hear the dreams that are stirring in the hearts around town. I want to read what they are writing, see what they are painting, be changed and challenged by how they view the world. And I want to stretch myself to write creatively, to explore deeper places of God's heart for people, to even pick up a paint brush and start putting color on a blank canvas.

Why? Because I have this heart for art communities and a genuine passion for creativity, yet I'm full of talk and no action. I've got these big dreams of seeing simple stories transform even just one life, bringing healing, encouragement, identity--whether that be through a short story, a play (ooh! start a dinner theater!), a short film--or just creating a place that is safe and inspired, for artists to emerge and start to release the stories that they are carrying.

I'm not even sure that I will be a journalist or a filmmaker, even though that is what I studied in school. However, my passion for storytelling will always be a core to who I am, as I search out the meaning behind what makes us function. I want to steward well what I've learned, even if it's just the simple lesson to approach stories with gentleness. Even if the next part of my journey takes me down a different route, I want to know that I've used this in between time to develop the artist/storyteller in me, allowing the maturing process to continue instead of aborting all of the growth I've experienced in the last three years.

That's my challenge. There. It's written out. Now I can't run away from it.