God Created You to Be You

by Sarah Van Diest @SarahVanDiest

As my thoughts meandered around this past month, they took an odd turn. It’s not that this kind of thing doesn’t go on in my mind all the time, because frankly it does, but it usually doesn’t make its way to paper. The level of “spiritual insight” may be lacking, at least in the up-front reading of it, and I’m not going to force any great pearls of wisdom to be born from this non-oyster. The only thing I will say is that God has implanted in each of us a creative and unique spirit. The beauty, splendor and majesty of our Father is revealed when we allow our individuality to show; when His workmanship stands in the sun and reflects Him to those who would see.  

As a writer and editor, my mind needs to be “on,” but sometimes I can’t seem to find that button. Perhaps you can relate. This is what flumped out of me one day this month as I fumbled around trying to find the ON button.

Productivity: a Tramp

So Productivity was there for a moment, but now it eludes me as if I never really held it in my hands at all. As if it allowed me to think I knew its name and held its leash; that my commands were its desire. What a rascally, wily thing it is lulling me into a sleepy sense of submission to its whims instead of my own.

Out it goes across the path into the woods. I saw its tail brush the bark of that tree there in the shade. The warm comfort of my seat feels pricked with uneasiness as I move from it and out the door. My shoes are wrong. Slippers. The common footwear of the writer in winter. Goulashes are much wetter and better fitted for the task at hand. Oh, but the time it takes to prepare for such a hunt is miserably gargantuan with all the stuff of proper suiting goes. But hang it on and don it well for into the woods the chase will go. It always goes in there.

Like the time it found a hole. How droll it thought itself to hide and obfuscate in leaves and mud and shadow of the deep parts of my mind, chuckling in its rhythmic breathing all the while believing I never go there anymore. But that’s exactly where I chose to look this lucky time of mine. It was in that crouching and sneaking under the low branches of memories dusty and damp that I first knew I was on the right track. That tramp. There in the corner of the eye of that thought was the slightest glint of shimmer. And too, embedded in the soggy breeze was a scent I knew full well and so out I reached my hand and yanked and grabbed. My fist was bound around the tail I said I saw today and so I pulled and loaded up my arms with all the fluff and snarls and charms of it. I brought it home with me and cooked it up for supper. Ha! Productivity, I am thy master!

That’s the song I sang that day in a nasally sort of rhyme and slanky beat of nothing more than captured thoughts boiled up and served. It has a way of creeping out of the pot and sliding across the floor out the door to its place of freedom once more. It does that. That tramp. So on the path again to seek and find, to hope and hop along the hidden trails of inner thoughts. All of its usual places of shaded spaces it isn’t or it wasn’t. Today it must have reinvigorated energies that give it gusto and cover its tracks. The search is long and long and lengthy and the footprints I see are all my own. In circles I spin and sit down again, but not in my chair this time, in mud.

Cold and slippery dark soil and leaves and goes the light from my thoughts. Where else to look? Down and on the ground is where my eyes turn around and peer up to see the filtering of the day falling through the tumbles of limbs and layers; light. Suctioned up to higher elevations I stand; my feet find their footing underneath. And in my muddy hand I feel a soft and furry friend holding tight… to me. So home we go together this time through the paths of thoughts and mind to find my chair and write the story of finding Productivity; my tramp.

I did find the ON button that day. Yay! But I suppose my point in sharing this with you is first to empathize, because I know I’m not alone in this struggle of trying to be productive, even sometimes feeling like my identity is entwined with it instead of with who my Father tells me I am, but also to encourage you to share what goes on in your mind. It’s okay if it doesn’t sound like everyone else. In fact, I hope it doesn’t. You are unique. God’s one and only you. There is such joy in His heart and in your soul when you walk in that truth. I praise Him for who He has made me to be, and who He has made you to be. Be encouraged today to let others see you.

^“For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them” (Eph. 2:10).

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Sarah Van Diest is a writer and editor. She’s the mother of two boys, stepmother to three more, and wife to David. Sarah wrote this book as letters to a dear friend whose life was turning upside down. She’s done this for years for numerous friends and will continue to, Lord willing. It’s her gift to them. It’s hope written down.