This is part II of a little mini-series on inspiration. You can see the first post here. You can also just jump in with this post.

I wrote previously that when I’m feeling empty, I try to go about filling up again. One way I do this is by seeking out inspiration.

Sounds good, right?

Well, some of you got right to work on those prompts in my last post, and the minute you started working on them, the minute you started soul-tending, something went terribly wrong.

Some of you wanted to think through those prompts, intended to, really really would have liked to, but every time you sat down to work on them, something went terribly wrong.

Yep, those nasty toxic voices (the enemies) were at it again. Looping and looping and looping, telling you:

• God doesn’t support inspiration. God supports serving and suffering. In fact, good people don’t sit around writing about inspiration. Good people suffer.
• God’s primary goal in your life is to teach you lessons, punish you, and break you, not see you live and love freely.
• This kind of thinking and daydreaming is a big waste of time and only for people who can’t tolerate real life. You don’t have time for this “filling up” nonsense. You’re a professional, for God’s sake.
• The other people, the prettier people, will be able to live an inspired life so much better than you. You’re not very good at this kind of thing.
• And, finally, your outfit is ugly today.

That’s the kind of nutso crap the toxic voices are probably hissing in your ear, spewing their sticky spit.

But you know what God does with spit? He takes it and he mixes it with a little mud and then he puts it on our eyes and he helps us to see. To see the truth. About ourselves and about others and about him.

If you’re feeing covered with toxic spit today, you don’t worry. God can do something incredibly miraculous with even spit. If we’re willing to let him.

So how do we move past these weaseling mantras and pursue inspiration wholeheartedly (to use a beautiful word from Brene Brown)?

1. Are you able to make filling up a PERSONAL VALUE? See, the toxic voices will try to convince you that this is a stupid value to have. So you have to decide if you really want to dig into your soul and see what’s in there or does that actually become a burden and a big pain and a big mess and you’d rather not deal with. Is it going to cost you too much?

(Now, I suspect that for most of you it actually is a personal value or else you wouldn’t still be reading this; however, as we all know, it is one thing to talk about our values and often quite another to live by them.)

• If something is a value, then you give yourself permission to incorporate it into your life.
• If something is a value, you see it as a necessity, not a luxury.
• If something is a value, you engage in it as you would a discipline (i.e. make an appointment with yourself) and not relegate it to “what you’ll do when everything else gets done.”

2. Are you able to TRUST THE PROCESS? Here again, the toxic voices will convince you that if you can’t create something or do something perfectly, it’s not worth starting at all. (i.e. if I can’t make it to yoga 5 times a week, then I’m not going to even start doing yoga. One or two days a week just wouldn’t even matter. OR If I can’t quit my day job to be a writer, then I’m not going to write at all. Unless I have all day to write, it won’t make any difference.)

But what if you just decided to try something that you feel might be filling to your soul and trust that something profound could happen in the process, however imperfect?

For example, you might try oil painting only to discover that you hate oil painting and that turpentine gives you a migraine, but in the pursuit of oil painting, you realize how much you love holding a paint brush and working with color, and you think you want to try water color. So you do, and it’s a huge hit, and you would have never discovered your love for watercolor had you not started down the road of oil.

Do you consider clarification and redirection a failure or a part of the learning process? Are you able to trust the process?

• Trusting the process means tolerating imperfection. Beginning the practice of filling up might mean doing something poorly the first, say, two hundred times you try it. Are you OK with that? See, perfectionism is this terrible drug that keeps us high and unable to access our most profoundly inspired selves. The high keeps us self-conscious and nervous and we are too frenzied to just settle in and do something poorly.
• Trusting the process means redefining “success” and “failure.” Our souls aren’t so concerned about proficiency. Our souls just want us to get out there and get our hands dirty. Love this line from Kathleen Norris: “Jesus reminds us, that it is not proficiency that heals us, but faith, and faith does not traffic with success or failure.” !!!! Can we just have faith in the process instead of counting on our ability to conquer something?

3. Are you able to STOP COMPARING yourself to others? The toxic voices paralyze us by telling us we suck. Newsflash. Someone else will always be able to do it better than you. Period. Comparison kills. So incredibly divisive and paralyzing. What if you could participate in the beauty and loveliness in the world and see yourself doing that in your own way, at your own pace, in your own style, and through your own context . . . instead of insisting on grading yourself against someone else. What if? And at the same time, what if you could appreciate the way other people pace and create and produce and contribute, but you didn’t feel the pressure to have to do it that way?

• When we stop comparing, we are actually able to receive great gifts from each other instead of being threatened by each other.
• When we stop comparing, we begin to believe the best about each other and ourselves instead of the worst.
• When we stop comparing, we begin to understand grace.

Filling up through intentionally chasing down inspiration is a lifelong discipline of self-care and soul-care. It is being connected to myself enough to know when I am empty and what I need to do to start filling up. It is about knowing what is going on in my own soul. It is about hearing the toxic voices (the enemies) for what they are and renouncing them as lies. It is about allowing God to take all the spit and make it into healing mud.