The Creative Within

Sometimes I feel like I’m waiting to be born.  Floating in an amniotic dream, I’m healthy and happy and yet, I want to arrive!  As time ushers me from phase to phase of my life—childhood, teenager, adult, wife (twice), motherhood (twice), middle-aged student—I find my womanly maturity needs ever-increasing creative expression.

There are days I feel as though I’m spinning, incubating, reaching for beauty that exists all around me.  I see it so clearly!  I feel it within me!  The golden light of an aspen tree, the simplicity of wind swept grass, the soft gray-glow morning brings before the sun rises in blushing immodesty… all invite my soul to create.

And yet.

I can’t stop spinning—which is the way for me to go?  Photography? Writing? Something else?  Can I learn to paint, crochet, be a woodworker?

I haven’t stopped incubating—the breakout moment eludes me.  My work gets gentle approval, a kind word here and an encouraging push there, but the labor continues without a crowning moment.  How long can I go before my creativity is pronounced talentless and stillborn?

I keep reaching, reaching, reaching, and yet—what I want, who I am, is just. That. Much. Further. Away.  I can almost touch my creative goals, but not quite.  What am I doing wrong? More importantly, what am I doing right but fail to acknowledge and build upon?  If I don’t trust my inner voice crying out, “Keep going!” who am I listening too?

And why?

     Why are those voices quiet when I need encouragement, and loud when the words include doubt?  My time will come.  I know it.  Mom put off her travel plans until “someday.”  She died before someday came.  My dad said “one day” his ship would come in and he would live a bigger life.  He died, still waiting for the ship, one day recently.  I miss them both and choose to learn the lesson they offered.

My time?

 Is now.