My 2014 Word of the Year
-Caedmon's Call, "Can't Lose You"
I have the YouVersion Bible app on my iPhone, and around New Years, there was a mini devotional that I went through where you prayed about what God might want to be your word for the year. I was a little dubious that God would answer this prayer clearly, but then I sensed a leading to one word:
OPEN.
So I am learning to be open.
Open to granola motherhood:
Our first kid is due in six weeks, and we are planning for a natural childbirth, barring any complications. We went through Bradley Method classes, and have hired a doula. And my sister gave me this book called Ina May's Guide to Childbirth, written by a midwife who does home births on "The Farm" in rural Tennessee, complete with pictures and stories about women making out with their husbands during contractions to speed along the labor. And I was telling my pastor's wife about how, as an artist, I want to really "experience the process, experience the pain." Her response was, "Yeah, I never think that way."
As a native Austinite, I feel I should receive a gold star for keeping things weird.
So, childbirth, without getting too graphic, is all about your body opening up and delivering a child, and this new experience will require me to be open to pain, and then open to this whole new little person and what he will mean in our lives.
Open to the fires of criticism:
My MFA in Acting graduate program is forcing me to face a lifelong fear: constructive criticism. I mentioned the book The Heart of the Artist in a recent blog post. At one point, the book goes through typical character flaws of artists and challenges you to work on one of them over the next year. I chose to work on being open to constructive criticism, which, up to this point in my life, has pretty much felt like death to me.
The thing about my grad program is that the classes are centered around constructive criticism. You rehearse on your own, then get up in front of your prof and fellow students and perform, and then are given immediate verbal feedback and adjustments to work on.
Last semester involved a lot of painful culture shock, but I am watching myself miraculously change. Why? Because the pain of being corrected in front of others has become worth it to me as those "others" have become trusted fellow travelers on this journey, and as I have seen unprecedented growth in myself as an artist directly because of my new openness to correction.
I am also seeing a spiritual purpose to it. It is easy for me to make my career in the performing arts my ultimate goal, my ultimate love. In short, it is easy to make it an idol. But being open to constructive criticism has acted like a fire, burning away my idolatry of my gifts and putting them into their proper and freeing place.
Open to being in the passenger seat:
And I am learning to be open to God in a new way, to try less to control my life and the timing of my "successes". It's easy for me to get impatient with myself because I'm not yet the actress that I want to be, because I don't know yet exactly what I want to do with my degree, because I wasn't as brave as I wanted to be in a voice lesson, or because I haven't yet been nominated for an Oscar.
But as I was leaving campus on Friday afternoon, I realized a new lesson that is settling into my soul. I typed it into my phone as I walked to the parking garage:
Let time be what it is.
Let growth be what it is.
Allow it to blossom.
There is beauty in the rhythms that the grand composer has orchestrated.
Trust his artistic taste, the pace, the builds.
He knows the climaxes of your life have to be earned.
"Yet you, Lord, are our Father.
We are the clay, you are the potter;
we are all the work of your hand."
-Isaiah 64:8
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