My parents were missionaries in Guatemala when I was a younger. From the age of six to twelve, I was a white kid running around trying to figure out Spanish. The craziest thing about being a missionary kid in Guatemala at that time, though, was that the country was in a massive civil war. There were guerrilla warriors in the jungles, students rioting at the universities, and even a failed political coup or two while we were there.
We frequently experienced blackouts at our house because guerrillas bombed power stations. As an eight year old I couldn’t quite figure out who would give explosives to gorillas…but I just accepted what my parents were saying.
The city of Guatemala also frequently turned off the flow of water. I remember many creative ways we learned to bath during a water outage. There were buckets, hoses, and wash basins to name a few. This all seemed completely normal to me as a kid. But looking back at it now, that was a weird time in my life.
Finally, around the age of 10 we got the money to install a cistern under our house. This was a gigantic tank that held water. The city water flowed into the cistern and stored the water there. That way, when the water was shut off, we still had a store of the wet stuff.
Why am I telling you this story?
There’s a war going on inside you. A civil war. It’s raging between your desire to create and your insecurities. It’s raging between your dreams and your failures. There will be times you feel like there’s a creative blackout inside you. You’ll feel like the flow of creativity has stopped.
My questions to you is this: Where’s your cistern? Where do you store up inspiration for those times when the lights are off? How have you invested in yourself so you don’t find yourself dry when the flow of creativity seems to stop.
There’s a war raging on inside you. Where are your provisions?
Great application.