~ God told me to be an artist, week 12.
Friday 24th February, 2023.
Social media has made us more connected than ever before. If you think about it, it's crazy how many times a day we're interrupted by a ping, buzz or ring. Even when I think I've muted everything, something finds its way through. I don't even know what sound equates to what anymore, so I look down and before I know it I am in a black hole of notifications and information. It's terrifyingly easy and unbelievably irritating spending hours scrolling. Everytime I succumb to my phone's powers I initially feel shock at how much time has passed, followed the powerful WHACK of shame, I can't believe I've done it again, I've spent 4 hours on my phone!
Just staring and scrolling. Ugh.
My outrage at the modern world is nothing new. People have been sharing their agitation with it for quite some time, but I hope you'll allow me some time to offer my opinion also. Hopefully it will speak to you in some way. For me, the realisation of ho easily I was distracted led to some pretty big breakthrough this week. It was extremely confronting but extremely valuable.
As I mentioned last week, I am in a precipice moment/ season right now. I have felt the building crescendo of something coming for some time. A bubbling beneath the surface. That a new chapter of life is about to begin. So it hit me like a swift kick in the trousers this week that I need to do something about all the distractions I entertain and allow in my life.
As I started thinking about how much time I spend on my phone, a lot of other thoughts started unravelling. I don't manage my time well at all. Now, you may recall, I've had a complicated relationship with sleep for a very long time, see previous blog "Rhythm is gonna get you'. God has been working on this with me, showing me how to pause, how to rest in him, how to prioritise time with him and it's been helpful. However, as I've been growing in some positive ways, negative things, or traits that are holding me back, have revealed themselves. These past week the subject of time management and commitment have reared their ugly heads.
'This is still a problem', I could feel echoing around my spirit when I think about my time management. Rolling my eyes, I knew this was the time and season where this needed to be worked on. It is wild to me that I am praying almost every day for breakthrough and instructions regarding my purpose and direction whilst God keeps responding with practical tasks for me to address such as how I go about my day.
'This is still a problem' repeated again in my ear as I tried to defend myself. Why was I so defensive, it wasn't a shaming or angry voice I could hear, but I suppose it was firm. I felt the sudden urgency to respond.
Where to start? Isn't that a big question!
I started by looking back.
I have half heartedly tried to have a daily structure and to improve my time management before, but I have given up every single time. When it became difficult, I tapped out. I knew I couldn't do that this time. This was essential to moving forward.
A lightbulb illuminated in my mind *that book!* I thought suddenly. I rummaged ferociously around my book shelves until I found it, Deep Work by Cap Newport. In a previous failed attempt and organising myself I had bought this book and it had sat on the shelf unread for longer than I'd care to admit. Clutching it in my hands I sat back in my chair and began to read. Cal explains that our world is becoming increasingly connected through technology, harming our ability to focus on tasks in a deep way without distraction.
Oh My Word. Every page stoked the embers in my tired heart until a flame broke out. I felt ablaze with the realisation that everything I struggled with was connected to this. Let me explain.
I've been living in the opposite state, a distracted existence, jumping from one task to another, falling into social media disturbances, trying to do it all, having a million tabs open on my computer and in my brain 24/7. Trying it my way and failing.
It wasn't even just about my sleep or getting a revelation of purpose I thought. I've been running wrong. Like a car with the incorrect petrol in the tank, it will cause a fault eventually. I realised that tackling my sleep wasn't enough, that praying for breakthrough wasn't enough and that waiting...wasn't enough.
I was looking at my life in such a fragmented way, as a pile of separate situations, asking God to fix them. Things to be tackled one by one, like a list of continuous professional developments entered in a spreadsheet, needing my attention like assignments from school, assuming God would do all the work.
Ultimately, reading this book started to reduce the pile of things I need 'to do' and replaced it with one goal...
...to get some consistency and ask God where he wants me to move and do my part.
Yes, building a better sleep routine is important. Yes, deciding to live in limbo for this season to strengthen my resilience is important, resting in God is important, believing Him is important. But God has been inviting me into a new way of operating for a long time, he has been whispering a very clear message, that I need to start developing consistency and discipline. This has been reverberating around my spirit for a long long time, I've just been allowing the distractions of the enemy, my own selfishness and fear to take control and ignore it.
It's as if I've been stuck in 'busy work', scratching the surface of what really needs addressing. I think because it's more possible and to a certain extent can allow me to slip into my own strength. That's not to say that since starting this blog 12 weeks ago that I haven't been working hard and trying to step into what I feel God is calling me to...
...but! But this reading the first chapter of Deep Work connected something for me, that I needed to cultivate focus and stamina as I stood in this precipice moment. That God's call into the deep waters, onto this new path would require another level of discipline and commitment, one which cannot be realised in my current pattern of working and existing. That the revelation of sleep and rest was a starter to an approaching main course.
In order to cultivate focus I needed to place some parameters around my existence, I needed to listen to God's instruction practically and implicate it. Not how I had been attempting before though, I couldn't just decide I was going to be focused or over schedule my calendar and hope for the best. I needed to create patterns of discipline in the areas that could frame my purpose.
This wasn't a career path I was on, this was purpose, and how could God reveal it to me and show me how to move if I was stewarding my time so poorly? He wasn't going to destroy me in the process by overloading me, he needs to refine me first, build my character, then co-labour with me when the time is right.
In essence my life needed to reflect the decision to commit and focus on what God has purposed for me and this starts with how I prioritise and spend my time. My devotionals were wildly on point this week and echoed the invitation to step up to the plate, and give myself fully to this new chapter.
So what does this look like? It looks like trying to wake up at a consistent time each day and starting my day with God and His word. It looks like seeing ideas and projects through instead of jumping all over the place in a thousand different directions. It's a commitment to building a consistent rhythm in my day to day, to ensure God is at the centre of all I do and that my body is rested, nourished and supported by established circadian rhythms that I have partnered with God to establish. It's believing that things can change because of His strength and my participation.
It looks like preparing the environment within me and around me to build resilience, strength and commitment to the road ahead. It's not jumping into task, getting distracted, panicking about money and demanding answers to my questions.
It's setting the right conditions. It's preparing the soil before planting, it's watering the seeds before harvesting. Essentially, it's doing things in the right order. Preparing for a journey instead of launching into it aimlessly. It's about knowing that the initial preparation stage in short, but the deeper one is ongoing and I'm going to need God for all of it.
It's preparing to be who God has ordained me to be instead of trying to be what people, and myself, want me to morph to. It's deep and focused preparation that needs guarding and needs all of me. Not a part of me, not a future proposition to commit way down the line. It needs me, now, to decide that I need to protect my focus and learn how to utilise it in my life.
It's all of this in thought and in practice. Preparing and cultivating at the same time as moving and doing. It's supernatural endurance that demands partnership with the divine.
It's about remembering earlier revelations that my creativity and it's call isn't actually about me, it's about what God does through it, the other people He will impact by me stepping into my lane and following His agenda, not mine.
I was listening to a podcast this week from Transformation Church in Tulsa USA. Pastor Mike Todd spoke about dominion, that we are called to take up our dominion as citizens of heaven, to bring heaven to earth in a tangible and God led way.
It struck me, dominion is bold, it has a knowing to it. Like, I know I'm here for a reason, not maybe I am. It stands firm in the face of opposition or fear because it knows its strength. A few phrases from the talk stood out to me and confirmed the thoughts I felt God has been communicating to me this past week (apologies if the below quotes were not verbatim);
"expand his kingdom in new territory on earth through us"
"my domain, knows my name"
"It's time to take up my space, the space God designed for me."
"I'm about to find my stride."
Reflecting on these phrases reminded me that I have been so double minded for the majority the past few weeks. Even in moments of apparent breakthrough I have been struggling to completely believe in what God has been speaking to me. I've been placing my human limitations on it and believing lies that have attached themselves to the depths of me.
But this week, as I've heard these revelations in my spirit and stepped into guarding and focusing my attention I feel the chains of indecision begin to break. For there to now be a way of pressing forward, a considered way and a direct line to stamina from the source of all strength, God, not my stubbornness, irrationality or past failings, but Him.
As I write this I feel a confirmation in my spirit that this week sees me stepping forward, for a shift to have happened. That my path ahead is becoming clearer, I just need to do my bit and keep the right conditions around my heart, spirit and actions.
I have been designed to utilise what has given me so that others can also be impacted, empowered and encouraged. Now it's time to claim that dominion and walk it out.
In August when I was in Sweden, I saw the icebreaker ships docked in Luleå. I asked my friend what they were, she replied, they break frozen waters and allow for others to the sail through the icy waters in the path they have created. At the time I thought this was pretty cool, but parked that conversation in my memory bank, and didn't think much about it. This week I came across the picture I'd taken of the big yellow icebreaker boat and smiled, I finally knew what it meant. Why I'd felt the need to take a picture of it at the time, why God had shown me it.
As the icebreaker breaks the frozen water across the seas, it does not do this for it's own sake. It's purpose is to create space and possibility for others to follow in the trail it creates. It's purpose is to create a clear passage.
Thinking back to Mike Todd's talk on dominion, if I don't take up my place, if I don't step into my role in the kingdom, if I don't take my creativity seriously or try and morph it into something that easier for me, the water will remain frozen in the lane I am supposed to create a passage through.
I don't need to be all things to all people or a fancy role or title.
I need to be the creative icebreaker I was called to be.
To fulfill my role, to sow into the kingdom for the sake of others and to realise that it's all connected and praise God for how patiently he's been waiting for me to get here.
You might say, but Catherine, you've always been an artist. Yes I have, to an extent, but in my own strength and with my own agenda.
Now it's time to see what God has purposed for it, to take up my creative dominion and pursue it wholeheartedly, not with resistance, not without discipline or focus, not with selfish goals or personal gain.
Not separate from my faith.
But with Him! God is good. Hallelujah.
Watch this space, in the words of Mike Todd, "I'm about to find my stride!"
See you next week, Cath x
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