Somewhere in the middle of teaching pottery to a group of campers, with my hands covered in clay, I experienced something I hadn’t expected.
I was having fun.
Not the satisfaction of accomplishing something useful or the relief of fulfilling another responsibility. Working with the clay, feeling it respond beneath my hands, and watching an idea take shape awakened a pleasure I hadn’t felt in a long time.
My husband was directing a camp, and during our first summer there, I had volunteered to help. Among the activities offered to campers, someone needed to teach pottery.
Why pottery? Well, because at one point I had been interested in it.
That should have been my first clue.
Helping was familiar territory. I was quite good at finding ways to be useful. Yet there I was, enjoying an activity for reasons that had very little to do with whether anyone needed me to do it.
As I worked with the clay, a memory surfaced. In my imagination, I could see myself at about five years old, sitting on our back porch making mud pies and apparently feeding them to my dolls. There was that little girl, happily occupied with dirt and water, creating simply because she enjoyed it. No one had assigned her a task, and certainly no one was waiting to evaluate the quality of her mud pies.
She was creating. And she loved it.
For a moment, the woman standing in a pottery class and the little girl on the back porch seemed unexpectedly close to one another. A pleasure I had known long before usefulness became so important was still there, waiting to be noticed.
I think that may have been one of the moments when a little piece of my heart came back.
What surprises me now is how ordinary the experience was. No dramatic interruption brought my entire life into focus. I noticed that I was enjoying myself, lingered long enough to take it in, and then went right back to teaching pottery.
Later, walking toward the camp office, one of those increasingly familiar conversations with Jesus seemed to rise within me.
“I love that about you.”
What?
For a moment I assumed He meant the pottery. And let’s be clear, I wasn’t producing anything anyone was likely to pay money for.
But the pottery wasn’t what I sensed Him drawing my attention toward. He loved that He had created me to be creative.
Apparently, I could enjoy making things without mastering the skill, impressing anyone, or finding a useful purpose for what I made. More surprising still was the possibility that Jesus enjoyed this about me.
I had known for years that God was my Creator. I believed He had formed me with intention and purpose, and I could have spoken confidently about being made in His image. Yet those familiar convictions were becoming unexpectedly personal.
And apparently, He liked her.
Our family had moved to another state for my husband’s position as camp director. We were finding our way into a new church and an unfamiliar community, and I was beginning to recognize the ways I had learned to hide within relationships. Becoming aware of those patterns was unsettling enough. Living differently was considerably more complicated.
During that season, a book caught my attention. Actually, the way I remember it, the book practically chose me. I brought it home and devoured it, finding language for things I hadn’t known how to describe.
Somewhere in those pages, I began feeling a little like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz.
“If I only had a heart…”
Except I knew I had one. Or at least I was supposed to.
After years of striving, performing, assuming responsibility, and becoming remarkably skilled at recognizing what other people needed, I had lost touch with much of what was happening inside my own heart.
This wasn’t a matter of having no feelings. There were plenty of those, particularly when life wasn’t unfolding according to plan. But feelings weren’t quite the same as knowing myself. Ask what needed doing, and I could probably tell you. Give me a problem to solve or someone to help, and I would know where to begin. Ask what I loved, what delighted me, or what made me feel alive, and the answers weren’t nearly as accessible.
Beneath all that competence was a woman I was beginning to realize I didn’t know very well.
The book awakened my curiosity, but it didn’t provide a map for what followed. There was no clearly marked route back to my own heart, and I wasn’t particularly interested in turning its recovery into another project I needed to accomplish successfully.
Instead, the Friend I was beginning to discover seemed to be inviting me into something resembling a treasure hunt.
Jesus had already been meeting me in surprisingly personal ways. Our conversations didn’t always happen during designated prayer time. A thought might interrupt an ordinary moment, or a question would arise that I couldn’t easily dismiss. Rather than moving past those interruptions, I was learning to become curious about them.
Increasingly, His invitations concerned things I had rarely considered spiritually important. What did I love? What made me feel alive? What brought delight?
At first, those questions felt almost frivolous. My familiar understanding of faithfulness involved serving God, doing what was right, and becoming more like Jesus. I knew how to examine my life for attitudes that needed correcting or habits that needed changing.
But what did enjoying pottery have to do with becoming more like Him?
I wasn’t sure.
Jesus seemed interested in things I had long regarded as incidental to the serious business of following Him. A forgotten pleasure or a passing curiosity could become an opening into a conversation I hadn’t expected. And, much to my surprise, I enjoyed these conversations.
He wasn’t waiting for me to arrive with a significant spiritual question or a carefully prepared prayer. Sometimes our exchange began with my noticing an ordinary pleasure and wondering whether He might have something to say about it.
The smell of freshly cut grass. Light streaming through stained glass. Thunder rolling somewhere in the distance. These were familiar experiences, yet occasionally one would capture my attention long enough for me to enjoy it before turning toward whatever needed to happen next.
For much of my life, paying attention had meant watching what was happening around me. Another person’s disappointment, an unspoken need, or a subtle change in the atmosphere could capture my attention almost immediately. I rarely considered how much of my awareness was occupied with anticipating what others might require.
Now I was beginning to recognize my own response to the world around me. Jesus wasn’t asking me to care less about other people. He seemed to be making room for my heart in the conversation too.
The little girl making mud pies stayed with me. She had been wonderfully unconcerned with whether her activity mattered. Dirt and water were enough to occupy her imagination. Remembering her made me wonder how many other pleasures I had set aside without realizing it.
Some interests had probably faded naturally as life changed. Others were crowded out by responsibilities that seemed more pressing. I couldn’t have said when creating for the sheer pleasure of it had slipped so far from view. But I recognized the feeling when it returned.
And I couldn’t quite get over what I had sensed Jesus say.
“I love that about you.”
His words hadn’t sounded like an assignment. There was no suggestion that I needed to develop my artistic abilities, begin a ministry, or make my creativity count for something. He had met me in the middle of enjoying what He had made me to enjoy.
That was unfamiliar territory. I was accustomed to wondering what needed healing or what I ought to do differently. Those questions still mattered, but this friendship was awakening another kind of curiosity: what if there were things within me that didn’t need correcting at all?
The pottery class hadn’t transformed me into an artist. My responsibilities hadn’t disappeared, and I still knew how quickly the old instinct to be useful could take over. Yet for a little while, with clay on my hands, I had remembered the pleasure of making something simply because I wanted to.
And Jesus seemed delighted to find me there.
I thought again about the girl on the back porch, making mud pies for her dolls. All those years later, I was beginning to recognize her again.
I wondered what else Jesus knew about me that I had forgotten.