I love DIY content. Who doesn’t, right?
We want to be shown how to be resourceful; how to make something beautiful out of what we have. We want to make use of what would have been considered waste to create something beautiful.
If you are like me, you might have often wondered, how did she come up with this ingenious way of making use of toilet paper rolls?
You then might have thought to yourself, I’m probably not “gifted” with creativity.
The Proverbs 31 woman was creative.
Keep in my mind that the Proverbs 31 passage is in the Bible, providing women with a role model of the kind of woman they can aim to be like as they seek God to be Christlike.
I reiterate again as I’ve written elsewhere that God is perfectly creative. Is it no wonder that the kind of woman he wants each of us women to emulate is creative?
She not only makes linen garments and sells them; she also makes coverings for her bed.
The fact that she sold what she was making tells you that whatever she was selling must have been very good.
As you and I wow at the beautiful DIYs around us or those we see on our screens, we can quickly forget that each of us is endued with creativity.
A perfectly creative God made us creative. We might have been hindered from being creative by either of these realities that I’ve shared in this post here. This does not in any way mean we are not creative.
This is why I’m sharing these 7 ways through which you and I can enhance our creativity. These have each worked for me at different seasons of my life. I trust they’ll work for you too.
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Pray About Your Creativity
As a young woman who’d just completed college, I joined a youth ministry for training and exposure.
I had the privilege of visiting a number of homes as a result. The homes were beautifully done. I kept wondering to myself if I would ever be capable of this kind of creativity.
I began praying about my creativity, especially in the context of the home.
Two years later, I got the opportunity to live in my own little house. I began working on it in a bid to make it beautiful.
Comments from my feeble attempts at creativity told it all. God had answered my prayer.
It is God’s will for you and me to be creative. Praying about our creativity is praying in the will of God.
Our goal for creativity should however be tied to the will of God for the redemption of mankind and the establishment of his rule and reign in their hearts.
Trusting him for a beautiful home so his purposes can thrive in those living there and those he brings to that home is a wonderful prayer to pray.
Do you feel you are not creative? Pray without ceasing about this specifically. God will answer your prayers.
I know this for sure because he answered me.
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Deal with Contextual Realities that have Hindered Your Creativity
I have written at length about 8 contextual realities that affect our expression of biblical womanhood in this post here. I trust it would be a helpful read as you reflect on hindrances to your creativity.
What do I mean by dealing with contextual realities?
These are realities that have affected us albeit our not knowing it. We then find that we have marked ourselves as not creative.
I may have been brought up in an environment where my effort at creativity was not affirmed. If anything, it may have been shunned.
I know children who cannot even make something as simple as a doll to play with because their parents insist that they focus on schoolwork or chores.
Authority figures such as parents and teachers may have spoken demeaning words, discouraging us in our creative efforts.
The enemy of our souls capitalizes on this, causing us to believe we are incapable of any form of creativity as women.
Trusting God to help us get to the root of why we have this mindset and looking to him, sometimes with the help of a mature believer, can help us walk into God’s release, freedom, and creativity.
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Be a Good Student of the Environment Around You
God is always at work. He has already providentially placed us in an environment for you and me to learn from.
When I visit the home of a friend, I like to observe my surroundings, learning from what they are already doing to make their home beautiful and cozy.
Even as we pray and look to God to be creative, he will often use others and our environment to help us be creative. After all, there’s nothing new under the sun.
Some of my inspiration for creativity has come from visits to retreat centers.
For instance, I learned about working with cheap material from second-hand vendors to drape some of my surfaces to enhance their appearance.
Our compound is slowly but surely taking shape because we have continued to learn from what we see at retreat centers.
There’s plenty that we can learn from just observing our environment and the people around us. We can then translate the lessons we are learning into action points as we translate our own spaces into creatively done spaces for the glory of God.
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Acquiring Skill and Training
I am glad that acquiring skills in our time and generation is no longer a challenge like it was in the past.
A simple YouTube tutorial might help equip you with the skill to beautify your space on a budget.
The internet abounds with DIY content, home décor, as well as content specific to a particular skill such as mat making, sewing, and the like.
A young woman I was walking with taught me the skill of making mats. I was able to make mats for some of my floors until I got too busy to do it. At the time, another younger woman would supply mats when I needed and I would pay for the service. This honestly made such a difference in my home.
The skill of learning to work with beads took my creativity in enhancing my appearance to a whole new level. I was able to make my own jewelry.
Acquiring skills in an area of interest can enhance your creativity big time, helping you to provide a conducive environment for your creativity to thrive.
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Exposure
Have you had that quote about the person who hasn’t traveled widely thinking that his or her mother is the best cook in the whole wide world?
Well, I’ve exaggerated a little in adding “the whole wide world”! Lol!
Exposure has a way of exposing you to new things as well as new ways of doing things.
How many of us have grown up in an environment where the kitchen, (often separate from the main house) is where activity thrives? Hence, the living room is only opened up when guests come.
Thinking of decorating the living room to make it beautiful is far from one’s mind. It is only pimped up for a day. It is then basically ignored until major guests come calling again.
I for one thought that the exquisitely done interior décor I saw in magazines could only be done by professionals. Those homes didn’t exist in my context. They were far, far away.
It was not until I joined the ministry I mentioned earlier and met a woman who’d walked the interior décor journey with several of the women whose homes I admired that I learned that interior décor was possible for laypersons like me.
Some of us only need a little exposure to know that we can take our skills to the next level, just by observation.
I personally wish I knew the world of home décor before we painted our home.
With my limited knowledge, I organized the painting of the rooms with all sorts of colors. I look at these rooms now and wish I’d done things differently. This has come with exposure.
I am currently looking forward to repainting the house in the future, to make it easier to decorate.
Don’t underestimate what a little exposure to the right environment can do in helping enhance your creativity as a woman.
You may not do exactly what you have seen done, but you will find that your creativity ingenious is slowly growing.
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Mentorship by one Who Has Excelled in Your Area of Interest
I recently stumbled upon a décor video that interested me a lot because the YouTube channel was by a woman who hailed from the part of the world I hailed from.
I assumed she would understand my context a little more and I could learn something new.
I later decided to watch a Q and A she’d hosted on her channel to get to know her better before making the decision to follow her.
One of the questions she was asked interested me a lot. The question went something like this:
Do you have a way of mentoring young upcoming home décor students?
Just thinking about this question takes my mind to the Old Testament times, as well as the Oriental culture where sons acquired their father’s skill or trade. It ended up running in the family for centuries.
The sons learned alongside the fathers. By the time they were old enough, they knew the ropes. They could run with the business or skill.
Does what I’m writing about here have anything to do with what Paul wrote in Titus 2 to Titus?
He told him to teach the older women certain things so that they would in turn train the younger women. (Titus 2:3-5)
I’m certain that part of being keepers at home, one of the things the older women were to train the younger women, was to create a conducive environment for the purposes of God to thrive.
Because God has created a beautiful world for us to live in (in spite of the devastation of the environment as a result of the fall) it pleases him when we are taught how to create a beautiful home.
Prayerfully seek the mentorship of a woman who has excelled in creativity in your area of interest.
As you wait for the Lord to lead you to a physically present older woman, the internet also abounds with sober godly older women you and I can learn from.
God has ordained it that the younger are to learn from the older. There are certain things therefore you will learn from older women and nowhere else.
Pray that God provides this kind of woman for you.
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Be a Lifelong Learner
“Of making many books there is no end, wrote the wise teacher in Ecclesiastes 12:11b.
There’s always something new to learn.
You and I will keep learning new ways of doing things. We will also come up with new ways of doing things too, as we depend on our creative God.
Never think you have arrived on your journey of being creative. The Scriptures reveal that we should keep growing from one level to another.
I believe this covers every aspect of our lives.
Constant learning helps us to continually transform our environment in a bid to be more fruitful and productive.
The other sideline benefit of this is dealing with monotony. Monotony, as you and I know, can be wearisome, boring, and not a motivation for creativity.
Even a slight change to our environment can boost our creativity levels, causing us to be inventive in other areas of our lives.
Even if you feel you have excelled in a particular area of creativity, there are so many other areas in which we need to excel.
When I began our Recipes and Hospitality channel on YouTube, I had set out to share the recipes the younger women I’d walked with kept requesting me for.
They’d had a taste of them in our home and wanted to also make them in their homes. If you’d told me I’d get to 100 recipes, I would probably have answered you that it is impossible.
Over 265 recipes later at the publishing of this post, I’ve been amazed at the creativity God gives in food preparation and production, especially when preparing food on a budget and with what you have on hand.
Keep learning. Keep growing. Keep creating. Keep your eyes on God, the ultimate giver of creativity.
I hope you will be a lifelong learner, as you seek to enhance your creativity as a woman, to the glory of God.
In case you are interested in buying yourself a copy of our book based on the Proverbs 31 passage, you can find it here.