A Room of One's Own
“Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen.”
In her famous extended essay, A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf made the statement (almost a hundred years ago now), that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” By this she meant that the demands of motherhood, domesticity and a lack of personal wealth were lethal to a woman’s creativity. Due to her battles with mental illness, Virginia herself was sadly never able to personally test her theory, but I must confess—a room of my own sounds heavenly. A room with a door that I can at least shut, if not lock. A room that muffles the noise that emanates from every other room in the house. A room where there are no interruptions, and I can devote myself to whatever I choose for hours on end.
A girl can dream.
I have a desk in our living room, a desk my grandfather made that the whole family shares, with a computer the whole family uses. I manufacture quiet by writing during my youngest’s nap time and regrettably putting my four-year-old in front of Paw Patrol. As I’ve written these paragraphs, my two girls have needed their hair brushed and have screamed the whole time I’ve un-snagged their tangles. One has cried over not being able to find her Elsa ring. My husband has needed his lunch. Now the girls are in the car, crying over the injustice of having to share a single book, vowing they are no longer sisters over their mutual offenses. They drive away with my husband, and I have a few moments now before my youngest will be up from his nap.
In the past, I’ve thrown up my hands in defeat, waved that white flag, accepted that in caring for my sweet family, there’s just nothing left over for unnecessary, creative endeavors, that this is a season during which I just can’t do what I love most, at least not with any regularity. In my case, this is writing. For you, it may be something else—baking, painting, playing an instrument, singing, acting, sewing, woodwork, song-writing—whatever that thing is that “lights you up” (as Bob Goff would say).
There are a thousand good reasons not to do the good things we love, the things God has perhaps even made us to do. I’ve rehearsed all the reasons it’s impossible for me to finish my novel or to write consistently. I haven’t slept in years. I have a chronic illness. I can’t even go to the bathroom by myself let alone spend time writing. I’m so exhausted at the end of each day that there’s no way I can produce anything worthwhile after the kids are asleep. My husband is active duty military and deployed or in training a large portion of the year. Right now, my insulin pump is beeping because my set is about to expire. Another distraction, another real and important need that must be tended to.
These are legitimate excuses anyone would understand, but recently, I have become dissatisfied with my list of valid reasons. I’ve found myself asking what living out of God’s grace during busy seasons like this really means. Does it always mean, as I’ve been telling myself for years, simply not doing the work he’s established my hands to do, waiting for a different, less demanding time in the future to try?
My days have not gotten calmer or less packed, but six months ago, the Lord started to impress upon me that he’s given me certain abilities, and he actually wants me to use them. My creative endeavors are not unnecessary or extra; they are for my enjoyment and for God’s kingdom. They were entrusted to me for the benefit of others, just as yours have been entrusted to you, and they are important. They are part of our faith walk, our relationship with Christ, our sanctification, and our service, our laying down of our lives for him and for others. It is not prideful but right to assess our strengths, thanking God for them and surrendering them to him for his purposes. It is good, not selfish, to utilize them, to prioritize them.
For years, it has seemed impossible to do so, but I’m beginning to see that it was only impossible because I insisted on my own terms and refused to accept God’s. I wanted no interruptions, hours to write each day as I’d had once upon a time. I insisted on a room of my own before I would endeavor to do the work God has given me to do. I didn’t want to come to Jesus with my measly three sardines. I wanted to provide the feast that would feed thousands. I did not trust him to multiply my efforts, to make them fruitful. I did not trust in his understanding and compassion, in the strength and help he wanted to give. I misunderstood the grace God was and is offering me for this time. I thought it was only grace to say no, to wait, to not do—grace to avoid the fire—but it is more than this; it is also grace to walk through it—stumbling, coughing and singed.
My old ways from before I became a wife and mother were intransigent, refusing to concede or even consider that there might be a different way to write, pray, serve, read the Bible, minister. I did not want to find a new way for this new season of life, because doing so was uncomfortable and messy. I liked the old methods, the old freedoms. It was easier to complain about the difficulties of the current season then to do the work under these challenging circumstances.
But waiting for the perfect moment to start means I never will. For me, these are not the wrong circumstances; this is the way life always is. It is a fallen world we live in, and each day has plenty of its own troubles and cares. After praying, after seeking him, after receiving an answer, I have to be willing to let go of the reigns and do the work he’s calling me to do anyway—not out of duty or trying to prove myself, but out of love for him, a desire to obey, and a hunger to see his will done. Christ is not deterred by my to-do list or my over-committed calendar. He can and will reveal what is essential and help me to discard the rest. I have to actually trust him—that he is more than able to work in and through me in the midst of the mayhem, and that perhaps it is here that he does his finest work.
Just as we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us, and just as his power is perfected in weakness, God is greatly glorified when the exhausted and frenetic mother stops, surrenders, and uses the gifts he’s given her to bless herself, her family, and her community—seeking first the kingdom by prioritizing kingdom work (2 Corinthians 4:7, 2 Corinthians 12:9). Perhaps it is in this bringing forth of art in the midst of the mundane and the imperfect, that she most honors her God, that she is most dependent upon him for supernatural inspiration, multiplication, and ability—when she does not insist on having three divine hours to create but makes do with the ten minutes she does have, when she does not allow the few loaves to deter her from trusting God to feed the starving crowd.
We often view our limitations as negatives, as though with the possession of unfettered freedom and the right circumstances, then and only then can we do and be what we were made to do and to be. But perhaps the constraints—the responsibilities and interruptions and repetitiveness of life—actually inform and enrich our work. Perhaps they’re exactly what’s needed to make and keep us humble and dependent, to control our selfishness, to eventually shape us into useful, artful, well-tuned instruments in the Redeemer’s hands.
I am (very) slowly learning to not let my own inadequacies dictate my expectations of God. I can do all things through him who gives me strength, which means that if God wants me to write, he will make me able to do it (Philippians 4:13). And this is precisely what he has done. I am learning to be in want and in plenty, to do the work even when things aren’t perfect, when I only have a few minutes or the house is a mess, when I haven’t slept or the kids are fighting (Philippians 4:12).
I have found that the cure for a hurting, overwhelmed heart is worship. It is the same cure for an anxious mind. Is my God not big enough to make a way for me to use the gifts he’s given me? Does he not want me to use them? Does he not insist that I do? He conquered death and sin. He brought order to creation. How much more can he make a way for me to worship him through writing? Yes, he clears a path through the interruptions and the never-ending chores that leads right to his feet.
It will not look like the old—this unglamorous way to his throne through the dirty underwear on the floor. It is a new thing, a new song in the throat, a sacrifice of control and excellence that God turns to productive dependence—our acceptable, reasonable service. That former way of life is old wine skin, destined to tear and spoil the new. Looking back at the past and longing for what once was leads to ruin and to barrenness. Ask Lot’s wife who could not leave Sodom behind, who doubted God’s goodness and provision. She could not move forward toward her deliverance and rescue and the new life God offered. She clung to the old and to her doubts and was destroyed (Genesis 19:26).
God has always brought people out of slavery into freedom, out of darkness into light, out of wilderness into a land flowing with milk and honey. We must trust him to spark life, to spark creativity, to fan into flame those gifts he’s given us as we fan them, too (2 Timothy 1:6). He brings water from the rock and makes rivers flow in the desert. He hung the stars and made the stuff of our souls. Yea, though we walk through the valley of tantrums and bedtime battles, he is with us. His rod and his staff, they comfort us and show us the way. Surely goodness and mercy follow us all the days of our lives, and we will dwell with him forever in that place he has gone to prepare for us (Psalm 23:4,6, John 14:3).
Perhaps writing without our own rooms—without interruption—will diminish our work. Perhaps, as Virginia Woolf proposes, our writing or art will not be what it could be had we more time, money, silence, space. Perhaps the perfect sentence I have concocted will evaporate before I can jot it down as my seven-year-old asks is she can use my phone or as my twenty-month old tears another page out of my Bible. Perhaps the full expression of our genius will never arise without that idleness and calm we do not, in fact, possess. I do not know if she is right, but I know with absolute certainty that if we don’t try, if we don’t put that pen to paper or brush to canvas, we will never produce any artistic work, good or bad.
I would rather stop lamenting my lack and recognize instead the abundance of a life lived in Christ. I’d rather trust him and see what he makes out of my giving him all that I do have—the fractured minutes and scattered thoughts, the interruptions and distractions—a sweet-smelling aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, well pleasing to God (Philippians 4:18 NKJ).
Jesus, you make ways, you make paths and room and space when there is none. We will follow you. You are a god of “both”, of beautiful tensions—Son and Father, God and Man, dead yet raised to life, all powerful yet all loving. Make us artists, not in spite of our distractions and full plates but through and because of them. Jesus, provide the space our minds and hearts need to create. Teach us to worship you by using the gifts you’ve given us, even when nothing is as we want it to be and there are more problems than solutions, when there is no door to close and no room of our own.