Pondering...

Recent events in my life have caused me to really want to step back and evaluate how I am spending my time and energy. Am I really doing anything that matters? How am I touching the lives of other people? Do I want to continue selling my kids clothes? How do I find a balance in all that I want to and/or should be doing? Do I take a break from selling to do other things for a while?

The answer is that I don't have an answer.

I really love making kids clothes and selling them and I am finally starting to build a bit of a following which has taken a long time and a lot of effort. I have finally begun to actually sell a few things. Do I then put all of that on hiatus and risk losing what I have worked to build?

At the same time, I feel like it is stealing all of the time that I want to put into other things. Other creative efforts like knitting and crocheting and quilting have really taken a back seat. I really want to experiment with photography a bit, too. Projects that I have wanted to do around my house have been put off indefinitely because I feel like I "need" to keep up with all of these ebay launches in order to keep my stuff out there. I want to have time to make things for charities and to donate to different causes, but I feel like all of this time is sucked up, too.

I have been pondering the idea of natural gifts like the ability to be creative and spiritual gifts as defined in Scripture and wondering how to really combine the two. Both are God given and it just seems that they should work in conjunction with each other, but I haven't figured out what that means or how to do that yet. I don't know if I ever will, but it bears exploring. I definitely think that God as the Master Creator, though, would scrutinize every element of His creation, just as an artist or a designer would do to make deliberate choices of things that work together in a particular composition. I just haven't figured out how mine work together yet. I think if I ever do, I will have more answers to the questions that I have been pondering.