At the end of my life, I'm not going to be sitting on my deathbed wishing I would have vacuumed more. And I realized a while back, I can either have a clean house or I can have creative kids.
And I know which one I will pick every time I will pick the creative kids. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott and your hosts are Dave and Anne Wilson.
You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today. I like this quote, mothers shape love and macaroni and sleeplessness and soap into young men and women over the course of many years. Is there a greater art or a more powerful patient creativity than that? That quote's by Brian Doyle, but it's also from the book called Create Anyway, The Joy of Pursuing Creativity in the Margins of Motherhood with Ashley Gadd.
And Ashley's back with us today. Ashley, you've written a beautiful book. Why did you include that quote by Brian Doyle? I mean, that quote summarizes the whole book. You could just not even read the book. Just read that quote three times and let it sink into your bones and you get the whole message.
Interpret it. In your words, like when you first read it, what did it make you feel? It made me feel validated in the sense that creativity takes on many forms and mothers are creating all the time. And it's good and holy work. I like that, that it's holy work because it doesn't feel like it in the midst of it, does it? No.
When you've made your third grilled cheese or the quesadilla and somebody's sick or you're just wiping noses and wiping bottoms, it does not feel holy in the least. No. And yet it is. And yet it is. It is.
Yeah. And we were talking yesterday and this is what came to me. If you're saying you're a mom and you've got gifts and you've got creativity and you should create anyway, you should relish in those gifts and you should do those things.
We talked about you writing your book on the bathroom floor as you're being a mom, but also being creative. So some pushback could be, that sounds really selfish. That's what hit me yesterday is like there could be some moms going, no, no, no, no.
When you're a mom and you've got littles or whatever the season you're in, you need to be fully present in their lives because these days are going to go quick. And yeah. So no, no, no.
You just put this creating and the gifting a little bit on the shelf, not forever, but for a season. Cause if you do both, you're really being pretty selfish. That's my question. I'm not saying it is or not. I'm just thinking there's some people, maybe even some moms thinking that like, I don't agree cause I think it sounds selfish. Do you agree or disagree? I'm prepared to go to the debate stage.
Here's my unofficial rebuttal to that argument. I think it would be such a shame for our children to not be able to witness a flourishing mother. And so this is a script I've had to flip in my own mind over and over again, to be honest, it's not like I went through this period where I just kind of figured this out and I gave myself permission to create.
And I never struggled with this again. I've been a mom for 12 years and there are still times where that feeling crops up of guilt or shame or am I being selfish to pursue this thing? But where I really come to land most of the time, even though sometimes I still need a pep talk for this, is that I want my children to see me flourishing in the creative gifts that God has given me. And when I make time to pursue those things, when I make time to write, I am a better mom. And when I make time to pursue the creative talents that God has infused uniquely inside of me, that fullness spills out onto my family. I have like more love to offer. I have more of myself to give when I myself am filled up.
I mean, it's the total cliche airplane, you know, you've got to put your oxygen mask on first before you can serve others. And for me, pursuing my creative gifts in this world is a form of putting my oxygen mask on. It's what fills me up. It's what draws me close to my creator. And when I'm actually making the time and the space to do that, it's not taking something away from my family.
It's actually giving something back to them. And so I just would love to encourage women to try to like flip that script around as uncomfortable as it may be. And it is uncomfortable, but I can tell you right now, my entire family, my children, my husband, everyone who lives in my house with me would agree that when I am writing, when I'm doing my specific creative thing in the world, I am a better mom. I'm a better wife. I'm a better friend. I have more love to give.
That's good news. That's a really, really good answer. Cause I was thinking, do you feel guilt? You use that word a minute ago, guilt and shame.
Oh, I would have totally felt guilty. It feels self-centered. I'm like, Oh, I have to put everyone's needs in front of mine. And then you become the martyr. Then you become resentful. Then you're like, why does my husband get to do everything he wants to do? And I get to do nothing of my dreams. And so you're saying by doing that, Welcome to our, you know, our marriage and family for about 18 years. I'm learning so much about you both. Well, you know, actually, as you were just saying that last thing here, I thought, I don't know if it's true in every family, but in our family, because you are so committed to being a mom, guess what?
I'm playing in basketball league. Like what you just said, doing things that you love is better for your family. I'm doing things I love.
She'd bring the kids and watch dad play softball. It's like, wait a minute. Why am I doing this? Not thinking a thing about it.
Like it's okay for a dad to be both, but not for you. You didn't do any of that stuff. I thought it would have been amazing for you to say, you know, I'm doing this thing and it is filling me up. And I could say like, yes, Dave needs that. It fills him up.
He's walking with Jesus, but there's something about play that fills him up. If you would have said, hun, you need to do one of those things. You did do that.
Actually. You said what fills you up right now is going to work out. And so then I started teaching at a club of workout classes and man, I came back home. I mean, I had worked really hard and it was only gone for an hour and a half and I felt full.
Yeah. And I wasn't as resentful of Dave's wonderful life. One of the things that you said is that you want your kids to see you do that. Why do you want them to see you? I think part of my desire for my kids to see me and specifically my boys, although I feel this same desire for my daughter because I want my daughter to grow up to know that she can be a mom and be an artist all at the same time.
You know, I want her to know what is possible for her, but with my boys, I look at them and I think, I want you to know what it's like to come alongside your future spouse when you get married and hopefully you have children. I want you to know what it's like to make this part of your family rhythm and part of just kind of the ambiance in your home. You know, we have a very creative house, so it's funny cause I'm kind of a clean freak. So my favorite story to tell about this is that we have a little cart of art supplies next to the dining room table and my dining room table, I mean seven days a week is covered in the kids art stuff. There's always a kid sitting at that table making art and I realized a while back, like I can either have a clean house or I can have creative kids and I know which one I will pick every time I will pick the creative kids. I wouldn't. I'm just teasing, but there's a part of me that's like, that drives me crazy, but I would have to figure out, I'd have to talk to myself saying, no, this is more important and there will be a day then it will be very clean.
Yes. I have to talk myself down lots of times too, but it's just so important for me to like cultivate that spirit of creativity in our home and for my kids to watch me be a part of that. Not, okay, you guys are creative, so you go make art, but also mom is also creative. This is a part of who I am. This is a part of what it means to be human is to be creative. And I just think there's no better way to model that for my kids than to let them watch me do it. Yeah.
And you're also making their life at this season a priority. It's going to be messy right now. It'll be different later. Maybe. Maybe not.
I don't know. Last time I shared this, if ever, but I'll never forget being at a promise keepers, even though that is Ashley, it was around for many years, but I heard Joe Stoll speak. Joe is a pastor and now he was the president of Moody Bible in Chicago when he told this story.
But I'll never forget this story. And he said, Hey, when I was passionate in Detroit, I had a house down in Highland park. And he goes, I was consumed with having a perfect front yard. It was something I really cared about. And he goes, I didn't hire a lawn company. I did it. And he goes, it was the best yard in the neighborhood. And I watered it and the whole thing.
Right. And he said, uh, you know, my boys, he said, they're teenagers and they wanted a basketball hoop. So we put it up and he goes, almost every day they'd asked me to play hoop. And I'm like, yeah, let me work on the yard first and then we'll play hoop. And he goes, you know, we really didn't play hoop much. I was working on the yard and he said, let me tell you, it was perfect. And then one day a 17 year old boy in my congregation was killed and I did his funeral. He goes, I'm driving home from that funeral and I pull onto my street, I look at my house in my yard and I thought, yep, it's the best yard on the street.
Who cares? He goes, I'm not saying yards don't matter, but he's like, Oh my goodness. He goes, I literally walked in the house, went upstairs to my teenage boys bedroom where he's working on homework and said, Hey dude, let's shoot some hoops. And he goes, dad, you know, I'm really busy right now. Maybe later. And I don't forget, Joe said, as he walked down the hall, he said, I said to myself, I missed it. I missed it. There's this window. And the yard was more important. He goes, don't miss that. So when I heard you tell your story, that's such a profound moment and that's such a profound realization.
And as a mom of two boys who are obsessed with basketball and a husband who loves to shoot hoops with it, they play basketball every day at our house. And so I just can visualize that so closely kitchen or dining room table with Sharpies and papers all over. It means you're not missing it. Cause there's some of us that would say, let's clean all this up. And again, I'm not saying clean doesn't matter.
It does matter. But this is the season you're in and you're saying create anyway, even in the mess, cookies and crumbs. I have to remind myself so often at the end of my life, I'm not going to be sitting on my death bed wishing I would have vacuumed more.
I have to like literally tell myself that once a week because I love to vacuum and I do have a clean house. And so it's all about that long-term perspective. I remember I think it was our third son was getting ready to go to college.
So we would be empty nesters after that. And I pulled out an old, old journal. And in this journal, they were all so little. And I remember writing in it. I don't have a life.
I used to say that over and over. I don't have a life. Felt like all the things that I wanted to do were taken away. And then that night I wrote another entry into that journal because it's funny as I was watching Dave and the boys, they're in the family room, laughing, doing something, messing around, playing something. And I remember thinking, I didn't think I had a life that besides Jesus, that is my life.
It brings me more joy than I can even comprehend. And it reminds me of this chapter that you wrote on play. Remember to play.
Why that? Like, why is that so important? Julia Cameron really convicted me with this idea of play. She wrote a book called The Artist's Way.
I don't know if anybody's read it, but she talks in that book about the importance of going on artist dates and how important it is to cultivate your life as an artist. Not just in the output, but also in the input. And I was really challenged by that because I tend to have a real work hard mentality. This is my toxic trait. I am a workaholic for better and for worse. And I love to work. I love to work hard at everything I do. And play is not something that comes naturally to me.
It's something I actually have to kind of work at. And so once I started really exploring this idea of incorporating play into my art, I realized how freeing it was to take some of the work-ness out of my creative process and infuse more play into it. And so a tangible quick story I could tell about that would be, I went to a photography workshop a number of years ago. And at the time, I was feeling just really burnt out with my photography practice. I felt like I was shooting the same types of images over and over again. Every session I did looked exactly the same. I didn't have a lot of joy in it anymore.
I didn't have a lot of delight in it anymore. And this photographer was coaching us through this idea of doing portfolio sessions. And portfolio sessions are where no money is exchanged. You go out and photograph the thing that you want to photograph.
You just go out, no rules. You give yourself the freedom to play and to experiment and just really embrace where the energy is in your creative practice. And that idea was so foreign to me because my photography was very wrapped up in work. It was part of my job.
It was part of my income. It was very uniform in that way. And when I received that permission to go out and do a portfolio session, I will never forget this sweet family let me come into their house and I got to photograph them in a completely different way. That was really different from the sessions I had been doing, which were mostly outdoors and very posed and everyone wore very pretty outfits.
And it was just all very Christmas card vibes. You know, that was kind of my old photography. And when I did this portfolio session, I spent a half a day with this family in their home, photographing them, making cookies and jumping on the bed and just being themselves. And I came home from that session just so on fire for photography again. It's like I had completely forgotten how much I actually love to photograph families. And I needed that permission to play in the session to like get down on the floor and just be kind of weird and ask them to do things that I didn't normally do. And that was a transforming moment in my personal photography practice because to this day, that is still how I photograph families. I photograph families in the home and we jump on the bed and we make cookies and we just get kind of weird.
And it was the play that unlocked that for me. It's interesting. When you walk in our house, we've got some portraits and actually it was a friend who was a photographer who had a free photo shoot with the most creative photo shoot idea. And so at the end of every single day that our kids were in school, the last day of the year, we would do a slip and slide and we would have shaving cream on the trampoline.
Oh, I love it. And we would have shaving cream on the slip and slide. And so that was our idea. And so we ended up, those were all the pictures we loved the most. They don't look attractive in terms of what we're wearing, there's shaving cream in our hair.
Yeah, we all did it. But the joy on their faces, it's something that you don't capture in just a regular photo posed shoot. Let me ask you, how important is that for you to bring play and joy into your house as a mom? Not just your work and your artistry, but as a mom. Yeah. I think children are so good at play inherently. They don't even need a lot of encouragement from me.
And I would say that's also something that's really inspired me as a mom and as a creative is watching my children engage in their own imaginations and watching them engage in a sense of wonder and watching their inherent tendencies toward that has made me assess how I can infuse more of that into my creative practice as well. That's good. What is the chapter throwing glitter? What's that?
Is it the same thing or totally different? I mean, I guess there's an element of play involved in chucking glitter at other people, but throwing glitter, that's another little tiny nod to Julia Cameron, who she talks about this idea of just the role that other people can play in our creative process and how she likens people who criticize a lot to being a lint picker. Like, have you ever been getting ready to go somewhere and you ask someone how you look and the first thing they do is lean over and just start picking lint off your outfit. That's a person who just criticizes. It's a person who's negative, a person who doesn't believe in you, a person who doesn't want good for you. So throwing glitter is sort of the antidote to that, right?
It's cheering, it's championing, it's really being an encourager for other people who are running the same race as us. I loved you talking about your mother-in-law. Yes, my mother-in-law, she wraps everything in glitter wrapping paper.
Everything. Your kids love it. My kids love it. So I will be frequently like Christmas is in December and it's not uncommon for me to find glitter in my house in July. So when I talk about my love of vacuuming, you know what started it. It was the glitter all over my house, but she literally, literally leaves a trail of glitter after she's been through our house. And I started thinking of that as like a metaphor for how I want to be with other women who are creating beautiful things in this world.
I don't want to fall into the comparison trap. I don't want to be a lint picker criticizing other women. I just want to be throwing glitter on them as often as possible. I want to be cheering for them until my voice is hoarse. And having been on the receiving end of that kind of support in my life, I just know how life-changing it can be, especially when you get to those places where you're stuck and you kind of want to give up.
I mean, I've wanted to quit writing probably 500 times in the last year. And so having that support system around you, it can just breathe so much life into you. And I want to be a person who breathes that same kind of life into other people.
Here's a question. I'd love to have both of you talk to the husband. I'm that guy who's listening to this and thinking, how do I encourage my wife? How do I inspire her to create anyway, to feel the freedom to, I don't think I've done a good job of that.
So how would I step into that? Cause I could have been, or any husband could have been sort of stifling that Hey, you know, you can't get too wild over here. We got three little kids or four, but instead be like, what are your dreams?
What do you want to do? How can I, what would you say to the guy? Cause I'm guessing your husband does that. My husband does that a million times over. I'm very, very blessed to be married to someone who pours into me day in and day out. And I would not hesitate to say every single thing I've ever done running coffee and crumbs, writing, create anyway, every creative thing I've ever done, I've been able to do because of his support.
It has come out of being on the receiving end of that encouragement. I guess what I would say to the husbands is two things are kind of coming to the forefront of my mind. The first one would be just expressing a genuine desire in what she's doing. And so for me in my marriage, what that looks like is my husband reads every single thing I write. And I have a lot of friends who are writers whose spouses don't read anything that they write. And I think bare minimum, that's such an easy place to start, you know, and maybe the wife is not a writer.
Maybe she's a painter, maybe she's a photographer or a gardener or a baker or whatever the thing is, but just expressing a genuine desire in seeing her and seeing her art. I think that's a really good, easy way to start. And then the second would be really practical and really logistical and offering her the time and the space to actually go do those things.
I don't know what kind of arrangements can be made depending on your life and your circumstances that would look very different from family to family, depending on the ages of your kids and your jobs and whatever else. But even if it's just an hour on a Saturday or another small increment of time, I think blessing her with the gift of time and space is one of the best gifts you can give your wife. Yeah, I was thinking, I didn't do a good job of that for decades and time and space and even money because I was just thinking a couple of times, Anne and I were doing a marriage message and she would have this idea of a visual. She wanted two plants, you know, that she could chop one. It's a long story.
And what was my reaction? What? You want me to go home depot and get not just two plants cause we got to give this message three times.
So I got to get six plants, eight plants. Yeah. I mean, what's going to cost 30 bucks? So, you know, whatever.
And get these clippers, whatever. And so I did it, but I can't imagine how you felt because the whole time I was like, why don't we do it? And then we did the first service.
I'm like, that was genius. And it's gone around the world. It's this video that we did years ago. And then a few years later, Hey, I want to use a tandem bike.
The tandem bike we got hanging in the garage, that old thing. Yeah. Can we take it to church? What?
No. That was my response rather than she's got a gift. She's a visual teacher.
These are iconic metaphors and visuals. No way is everyone forget the tandem bike wants in our vertical marriage, small group everywhere we go. People are like, Oh, that tandem bike was so good. I'm like, I'm the guy that almost stopped it rather than going way to go, honey. How can I help you be who God created you to be? So I would just say to the guys, if you're like me, if it's money that's holding you back or time or space, don't be Dave, be better than me. Go, man, God's made my wife unique and he's created something in her that I don't have.
I don't even understand it, but it's beautiful. I'm going to bring wind to that rather than be the one pulling her down. That's really sweet. And you're super supportive now with all of those things. I've learned. Her teaching is a lot better than mine.
And I'll add another one to that. I think it'd be awesome for a husband to ask his wife this, but maybe you're single, maybe you're a single mom, maybe you're raising your kids by yourself or you're just even a woman that has these longings, but you don't have a husband that will maybe ask you those things. So here's one of the things I would like to hear from a friend, from a mom, from a sibling, but especially from a husband is like on a date night, if Dave said, tell me the longings of your heart, it could be spiritually, it could be artistically, it could be just longings, like share your longings. First of all, I would cry and I would want to think about it.
Like what are my longings? And then that next thing, Dave, that you said, how can I support you in that? And even if a friend said that to me, what as a friend, I could open up the conversation and I could say to my friend, share with me the longings of your heart, especially if you're a young mom, you feel like nobody hears those things anymore.
They feel forgotten. But to say that with a friend and then you could even say, how could we support each other? What could that look like? And I think this could be your book. Create Anyway is a good resource to go through some of those questions and those longings and those dreams and to spur that flame of creativity again. Thanks. So if something on today's episode clicked with you, we just want you to know you are not alone because every single marriage has its share of just highs, but lows too. And the question is, where do you go for help?
That was always our question. We are so thankful that you listened today and we want to share one of our favorite resources. It's a free guide filled with helpful marriage wisdom from real life couples who've been right where you are. And you can grab your copy today at familylife.com slash marriage help.
Again, go to familylife.com slash marriage help for your free guide that's full of marriage tips. Creativity is such an important part of God's character. And he's passed that on to us as his image bearers. I love that we've been highlighting the importance of creativity over the past two days. And I hope it has given you hope as you think about all the ways God has called you to be creative, regardless of your life stage. I'm Shelby Abbott and you've been listening to Dave and Anne Wilson with Ashley Gadd on Family Life Today. Ashley has written a book called Create Anyway, the Joy of Pursuing Creativity in the Margins of Motherhood. You can get your copy of Ashley's book right now by going online to familylifetoday.com or look for a link in the show notes. Or you could feel free to give us a call at 800-358-6329 to request your copy of Ashley's book Create Anyway.
Again, that number is 800 F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. And speaking of creativity, we're right in the middle of October. And that means that many people probably in your neighborhood and maybe even you are going to be carving pumpkins very, very soon. Well, we wanted to step in on that and help you out by not only giving you creative ideas on how to carve a pumpkin this year, but also how to share the gospel with your kids as you're carving your pumpkin. So you can get your free download of Gospel in a Pumpkin by Family Life. It includes activities, pumpkin face stencil sheets, and a guided script to help your kids learn what matters most while you carve your pumpkins this year. You can find this free resource at familylife.com slash pumpkin, or you can look for it in the show notes. Again, the address is familylife.com slash pumpkin. Head over there to get your free download of Gospel in a Pumpkin. Now coming up tomorrow, musician and author Andrew Peterson is going to be here with David Ann Wilson to talk about fueling kids' imagination and creativity to open doors for the kingdom of God. That's tomorrow. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of David Ann Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.
