Matter Matters

I became a mom in 2018. I was 26, with a pretty strong sense of self for a 26 year old, I'd say. I've always loved art in all forms — music, fashion, spaces that make you feel something. I've always believed matter matters — that the things we make, matter very much to God. Creativity is deeply meaningful.

“When we first read about the image of God in people in Genesis 1, we have as yet heard nothing about God as redeemer or the God of providence or the covenant God or the God of moral truth. The one thing that we know about God is that he created the world. In its immediate narrative context, then, the doctrine of the image of God in people emphasizes that people, are, like God, creators.”

Motherhood became a refining season for me (as it is for everyone, I’m certain) — one that stripped away a lot of what I thought I knew about myself. What mattered to me, what I found inspiring, started to become clearer.

Perhaps my perception of what matter I found particularly inspiring narrowed because of a lack of energy or bandwidth. Perhaps it’s because of the aforementioned “stripping away” through a tough bout of PPD. I started motherhood in a new city, knowing quite literally no one, three kids under three, floundering and trying to find myself.

When we moved to NYC in 2021, I blossomed. Don’t get me wrong. I still battled crippling anxiety the first six months we were there and the fatigue of starting over again in a new city. Knowing no one. Getting to know myself in a new city (again) that was so vast it made my head spin, in just about every good and bad way possible.

As cheesy as it sounds, I do believe very much in the saying “if you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere.” It’s a place that’s tough on you, internally and externally. High highs and low lows. But like I said…I blossomed. I was still a new mom, with my youngest being 5 months old when we moved there. Trying to find myself, whatever that meant, after giving birth for the third time.

We lived in a 600sqft apartment (you can peek at it here), which obviously didn’t give me much of a canvas in terms of tapping into interior design as an art form, which is something I love to do. Not that I felt the need to do anything crazy — I simply wanted our space to feel like home, not make us crazy while still feeling considered. I truthfully hardly ever wanted to be home. Home was just that — a tiny apartment with two toddlers and a baby. Getting out and about was the obvious answer, for the sake of all of our sanity.

I think as a result of this, the area of my life, my own “matter” as art, was how I dressed every day. It’s no secret that the way we feel in what we wear can impact how we feel in so many more ways. I found myself again through getting dressed and getting myself out the door, to relish in the inspiration of the city that was honestly like a balm for my tired mom soul (minus the ambulance sirens, of course). What I wore felt like the only thing that was truly mine. And I found that to be a sort of artistic expression, even if what I wore wasn’t particularly “artistic.” You get what I mean, I hope. It felt like an external expression of me.

“For (art and music) are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.”

Fast forward to now, I’m walking on a treadmill (we have room for a treadmill!) in our home in Los Angeles. I’m looking out in the backyard (we have a backyard!) at Michael doing some late night work in the office (we have an office!). I just did a load of laundry (we have a washer/dryer!) and am about to take an everything shower in our bathroom (we have two bathrooms!). I’m burning my favorite candle, listening to a record, looking at all of the pieces we’ve brought into this home the past two years as I write this.

“Beauty is a gratuitous gift of the creator God; it finds its source and its purpose in God’s character. God, out of his gratuitous love, created a world he did not need because he is an artist.”

The past two years have been a continuation of this exploration of personal “matter” — how I dress is different here. How we live is different here. What inspires me is different here. And I think it’s fair to say that frankly, in this season (this moment, rather), I just don’t care as much about what I wear.

Not to say that I don’t still get hyped for a sick find on The RealReal or an excuse to dress up. But I have more space now. I don’t only connect to myself in the way I get dressed, in the same way I did when living in NYC. I have more space to breathe, more space to tap into all the things that inspire me.

As humans, we are limited. We can’t do it all, have it all, be it all. And I honestly LOVE having limits, being hemmed in by my humanity. It’s freeing when you can rest in that, I think. I love that the things we draw inspiration from, the way we express our creativity, can shift and change throughout our lives. If it’s like a set of concentric circles, what I wear has moved out a few rings, and other things have moved in. The shifting is a bit is exciting, isn’t it?

“Your creativity isn’t a talent you developed — it’s a divine inheritance. The God who spoke worlds into existence breathed that same creative power into you.”