Permission to Create
How living your calling shows your children they can live theirs
Fingers typing away as the klickety-klack sound of the keyboard forms sentences, taking me to other worlds, I smile contentedly. My children are used to this rhythm now, the four of us creating side by side at the kitchen table. While they work on projects of their own, building castles out of toilet paper rolls, pipe cleaners, and glitter glue, I work on writing projects that help me still feel like me in the middle of a full life.
A question I’m asked regularly is how I find time to write with three young children and all the demands of this season. For a long time, I wrestled with the fear that my calling to write somehow takes something away from my children rather than adding to their lives.
Bit by bit, I’ve come to believe, hope, and pray something different.
As our children watch us pursue the dreams God has placed within us, we are modeling from their earliest years that they can do the same. It is possible to live out your purpose and your passion while also being present with your kids. One does not have to cancel out the other.
I remember being in grade school and realizing that almost anything outside the normal rhythm of the classroom required a permission slip.
Run for student body president? Permission slip.
Attend a field trip I was excited about? Permission slip.
Ride the bus with friends to a sports game? Permission slip.
Audition for the school play? Permission slip.
If it stretched beyond the expected routine, someone had to sign their name and say yes.
Some days inside my own home, I catch myself looking around as if I’m still waiting for that approval. As though someone else needs to grant me permission to do anything outside the boundaries of my mothering responsibilities.
Then it hits me.
I’m the parent now.
No permission slip is coming.
The realization is both a freeing gift and a confining curse.
There are days when a thought arrives that I’m desperate to write down before it disappears from my scattered mind. Sometimes I follow that thread, throw caution to the wind, and declare an hour of quiet creativity. My kids rarely protest. In fact, they usually rush to the craft box we keep in the garage, eager to see what they can make with a few simple supplies.
In moments like these, I often regret saying no, but I can hardly remember ever being disappointed that I said yes.
Somewhere along the way, many of us absorbed the subtle message that early motherhood requires a kind of martyrdom. That our calling goes on pause until the kids are older. Until life is more manageable. Until chaos finally settles.
Lately, I’m learning something different.
I am a happier, more anchored, and more present mom when I’m actively living out the callings God has placed in my life.
Motherhood and making.
Caretaking and creating.
Nurturing and narrating.
Feeding and forming.
No permission slip is coming, and maybe that is exactly the point. This one big, beautiful life we’ve been given invites us to hold these callings together.
So, I’m trying to be softer with myself. Setting the bar a little lower. Remembering that every part of who God made me to be can become part of how I disciple my children. We create side by side, in the margins of ordinary days. In the middle of glitter glue, laundry, and half-finished thoughts.
I don’t want to live as though motherhood has afflicted me. I want my children to know from their earliest memories that life holds different kinds of work: work we must do, work we get to do, and work we love to do.
Sometimes I picture my children years from now, maybe raising families of their own. I hope they experience early parenthood not as a subtraction from their calling, but as an expansion of it.
What if our children never absorbed the idea that they were a burden or distraction from more important work? What if instead, they grew up believing they were always an integral part of it?
On good days, I believe this with every fiber of my being. On harder days, I try to be kinder with myself, trusting that every small rewrite of the old internal script is opening a wider space for purpose to grow.
Moms and dads, it starts with us. What an honorable responsibility.
Next week, I’ll get to share something our family has been quietly creating over the last year that is finally ready to be released into the world. I can hardly wait! Working on it has reminded me how true it is that we often overestimate what we can accomplish in a short burst of time, but underestimate what can grow slowly over a longer stretch.
If you’ve been quietly creating something in the margins of your life lately, I’d love to hear about it. And if you’ve been waiting for a permission slip to pursue the work that makes you feel most alive, consider this one signed.
This is so key. I can’t wait to see what you guys are releasing! This reminds me of a conversation I recently had with our oldest where it became apparent that he had no clue what my hobbies or interests outside of homemaking (which is something I do enjoy many parts of) are. I was convicted that I haven’t done a good job of prioritizing those other hobbies in front of my kids.
This is so sweet! I love that you involve your kids by giving them their own space to create. It allows you some margin while engaging them/giving them something to focus on. I'm going to have to borrow this idea as my little one gets older!