as if having a little one on my knee was the key that unlocked my ability to produce content. Which I thought was really, really weird.
Usually when something really, really weird happens to me, it’s because God is trying to tell me something. So I asked him. “Hey, God,” I said. “What’s up? Why won’t you let me write in peace while sipping my cafe mocha with half the chocolate and extra whipped cream?”
To which he immediately replied, “So that you will know, my girl, that the privilege of creating art is not reserved for those with hours of free time on their hands. Art is for everyone,” he said. “You don’t need an artists’ retreat or a quiet cafe. You can create things of beauty whenever and wherever you find yourself in life.” (You should know that I did gently mention to him that though I might not technically need to go to a writing cabin in the woods, I was not opposed to it.)
Follow Your Fears
Where I found myself at that moment in time was knee deep in family life. Growing babies and raising babies, feeding babies and kissing babies. I had piles of laundry up to my ears and a dishwasher that never got a break. I had a to-do list a mile long and, as God had picked up on, was not entirely sure that I should be chasing after artistic pursuits at all.
As ironic as it sounds, by shutting down the right side of my brain every time I left the house, God was telling me that family life and creative life were not incompatible and were, in actual fact, symbiotic.
This is not to say that writing in cafes is a bad thing or somehow an offense against the duties of motherhood. But God knew that I needed to behold just how harmonious the relationship between the two can be. Bringing forth new life, nurturing that life, and producing art — it all emanates from the same creative well. God wanted to show me that there weren’t barriers to entry. He wanted me to see that he’d flung open the gates and all were welcome to drink from the well and then go forth and cover the world with bright splashes of paint, mellifluous song, and soul-stirring prose.
But, I asked God, what if my splashes of paint aren’t so bright, my song not mellifluous, and my words not prose-ish in the least? What if my art is terrible? What if people laugh? What if they gather around large tables and talk about how very cringe-worthy my art is?
“Yes, well, people do and may,” he said, “so, what if?”
God then reminded me of an episode of Dr. Phil that I’d seen a few years earlier during what must have been (we can only hope) either a sleep-deprived temporary lapse in judgment or God showing off and demonstrating that he can work through anyone, no matter how many odd interventions they’ve facilitated.
Dr. Phil said to follow your fears to their logical conclusion. What is the very worst that could happen? Maybe they will laugh, and maybe they will insult you, and maybe you will cry a little. You’ll probably feel embarrassed for a while and want to hide away for a time, but guess what happens next? You will curl yourself into your husband’s arms and let your little ones call you “pretty mama.” He will remind you that you are the treasure of his heart, and they will pick flowers for you and tell you startling long stories about the dreams they dreamt the night before. After a time, you’ll brush yourself off and get back to the business of living.
Rudyard Kipling once said, “Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.”
My fears have this very bad habit of telling me all sorts of ludicrous stories about all sorts of terrible fates that might befall me, and rarely do I question them.
“So I’m going to produce the worst piece of art ever created? So bad that it will be hung in the Louvre so that people can marvel at what a gruesome thing it is that I’ve produced? A sort of cautionary tale for the masses? And then I will die a long, drawn-out, torturous death from the shame of it all? You don’t say.”
One day it occurred to me that maybe there was another way. Maybe instead of giving my fears carte blanche to manage my anxiety levels, I should stop for a moment and examine them. Turn them over in my hands for a bit, peer into all their dark corners, and then, instead of taking them at face value, laugh at all their silly, melodramatic ways. Because they are often very silly and melodramatic.
Love the Bomb
But then Stephen Colbert had an even crazier idea. What if, he suggested in a 2015 interview with GQ, we could learn, in some small way, to love our fears? Wouldn’t that be marvelous?
“Our first night professionally onstage,” he said, the longtime Second City director Jeff Michalski told them that the most important lesson he could pass on to them was this: “You have to learn to love the bomb.”
“It took me a long time to really understand what that meant,” Colbert said. “It wasn’t ‘Don’t worry, you’ll get it next time.’ It wasn’t ‘Laugh it off.’”
“No, it means what it says. You gotta learn to love when you’re failing…. The embracing of that, the discomfort of failing in front of an audience, leads you to penetrate through the fear that blinds you. Fear is the mind killer.”
He said he trained himself, not just onstage but every day in life, even in his dream states, to steer toward fear rather than away from it. “I like to do things that are publicly embarrassing,” he said, “to feel the embarrassment touch me and sink into me and then be gone. I like getting on elevators and singing too loudly in that small space. The feeling you feel is almost like a vapor. The discomfort and the wishing that it would end that comes around you. I would do things like that and just breathe it in.”
He stopped and took in a deep yogic breath, then slowly shook his head. “Nope, can’t kill me. This thing can’t kill me.”
After reading that interview, I realized that I wanted to get to a place where I didn’t just grit my teeth and force myself to keep moving forward in spite of my fears but, like Colbert, I wanted to “learn to love the bomb.” I was pretty sure that was where I would find the greatest level of freedom.
His interview also made me think of the often repeated question, What would you do if you had no fear? Or if you could not fail? And what things in life are worth doing, whether you succeed or not?
That’s always been a bit of a tricky question for me. I think one of the things that has always stopped me from truly leaning into my fears is that I’m not always sure whether my dreams line up well with God’s plan for my life. I might be willing to take a leap of faith if I was sure that God wanted me to leap. But I wasn’t sure, so for a long time I was unwilling to take a step in any direction.
Everyone kept telling me to discern God’s will to the best of my abilities and then jump. God would catch me if I were to fall, they told me.
“But what if I mis-discern,” I replied, “and jump off the wrong cliff? What if he’s waiting for me on the north side of the mountain and I recklessly leap to the south?”
“Hallie,” they said, “don’t you know that God will catch you even if you jump off the wrong cliff? He is everywhere — North, East, South, and West. Ever waiting to catch you when you fall. Which you will, by the way.”
It took me a long time to understand this. Even longer to believe it. I nodded my head, so as not to offend, but secretly, deep down inside, I suspected that God would only have my back if I perfectly followed the path he had set out before me and got an A+ on all of my discernment tests. Knowing that I’m more of a C student in this area, I figured that I would probably head in the wrong
