“We see you as an artist,” he said. His hair was long, thick, and wavy. His face thin and defined. His gaze intense and gentle.

Sixteen of us sat around a big solid wooden table, eating a meal together. We were all part of ÌìĂÀÊÓƔ’s Artist Residency.

Somehow I ended up among them.

I didn’t think of myself as an artist. Though I studied music composition in undergrad, I always felt a bit like I was faking it—everyone else had a much greater mastery of their instruments and musical concepts.

I thought my main focus for the week of the Artist Residency was going to be writing music. It turns out it was something much deeper.

His words to me around that table were part of a shift in how I thought of myself. It may seem small from the outside, but on the inside it was big. And risky.

I didn’t spend time around artists in my younger years. My family didn’t have a category for them. None of us were artists. In fact, I don’t know that I could find a single artist in my family tree.

We’d go to art events, but there was always a sense that those people weren’t our people. They were misunderstood and called “artsy-fartsy.”

Artists may make pretty things, but they didn’t seem to belong in our family.

It wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties that I began to embrace the fact that I really am a creative at heart, and that making is a big part of who I am.

Every group of people has rules.

Every group has a code of conduct for how you belong to it. Whether it be a family, an organization, a cult, or a culture, and whether they are spoken or unspoken, subtle or overt, they’re there.

Just look at communities and subcultures around you and you’ll quickly see them:

• As sports fans, we wear the colors of our team. We chant the chants and idolize the players.
• As citizens of a country, we sing the national anthem and place a hand on our heart.
• As participants in a church and religion, we perform rituals and hold certain things sacred.
• As members of a company, we fill out the report, go to the meeting, and get promoted for displaying and embracing certain qualities.
• As members of a family, we act a certain way and have certain preferences that are particular to our family unit. Things like: don’t text at the table, always work hard, always be polite, never cry in public, etc. We do these things because “that’s what our family does.”
• As members of a friend group, we act a certain way and have certain preferences. We laugh at the same jokes, share some similar interests, complain about similar things, spend our money in similar ways.

The rules draw a line in the sand, differentiating who is in and who is out.

To follow the code of conduct is to belong. To violate the rules means you do not belong. And the cost of not belonging is some sort of punishment:

• Break the rules in school, and you’re sent to the principal’s office.
• Break the rules at a concert, and you’ll meet the security team.
• Break the rules of a religion, and you’ll be called a heretic.
• Break the rules in a family, and you’ll be sent to your room.

The punishment reinforces the rules and increases the commitment of the community. They say that there is a way to belong and a way not to. There are those on the inside and those on the outside.

For much of our lives we are taught to belong—to fit in, keep our heads down, don’t stand out, don’t question the rules, don’t push the limits.

But there comes a time when limits need to be pushed. Beliefs need to be questioned. Rules need to be broken. Friends need to grow. And family needs to change.

In order to create change, you have to break rules.

While some of these rules are overt and spoken, the more insidious ones are those that are not. These are the rules that are assumed, and that we often take on without realizing it.

These are the rules that we live by without knowing it. These are the rules that keep us stuck.

For me, one of those rules had to do with being an artist. To let that be true of me was to accept that there are parts of me that my family won’t be able to understand. In fact, they may even reject those parts.

Have you thought about your rules and where they come from? Have you considered how your rules help you and how they hinder you?

If you feel stuck in some way, it’s likely a result of your desires competing with some rules you have for yourself. To get unstuck, you must put language to them and explore them.

The post The Psychological Necessity of Breaking the Rules appeared first on ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ” of Theology & Psychology.

I came to ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ” looking for something.

I had been working as a pastor of student ministries for five years—the five most complex and hard to describe years of my life. Only a few weeks into the job, depression began to set in and it became a frequent character in my life throughout those years. I wouldn’t say that those feelings were completely new, but the intensity and regularity were.

Something was wrong and I didn’t know how to fix it.

Years of struggle left me questioning what to do with my life. I found myself in conversations with students, in teaching series, and in everyday life circling similar themes. These conversations were about risks, creativity, dreams, and calling. I knew there was something in these conversations for me, but I didn’t know what. I’d tried the only path I knew. It was time to explore options. Theology and psychology seemed like the best places to explore amongst those themes for a sense of vocation.

I came to ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ” searching for something.

I thought it was a career path or a way forward. What I found instead was space for myself, which turned out to be what I was looking for all along. I know that may sound odd, so let me explain: though I learned so much in MATC program, it is the faces that were with me along the way that I cherish most. I needed them to speak truth to me, affirm what they see in me, hope on my behalf, and create space for me.

As the program progressed, I continued to desire more conversation, more tools, and more space for myself and my classmates to understand what vocation means for each of us. At its simplest, I define vocation as the intersection between who a person is and what a person does. The school has a way of guiding us to answer the first part of that equation (who we are), and I began looking toward the second part (what we do) with more intentionality. Together with my good friend and co-conspirator, , I started facilitating conversations around these ideas. I also began hosting professors and outside lecturers to share thoughts on their path and how they had come to answer these big questions.

I knew I was still searching for something, and I was hoping that doing these things would help me find it. I wanted to figure out what to do with my life. And I wanted to help my classmates in the same way.

That’s when it happened. In the middle of conversation over coffee something big shifted for me. A friend and classmate, , who had been participating in the vocational work that I was leading said to me, “The difference between the way you and I enter the [vocation] conversation is that you want to help others. I’m just trying to figure it out for myself.”

That observation was like a fan on the embers of a fire. What had been happening in the depths of myself suddenly began to burst out of me: what if the ways I wanted to help others were enough for me to call that my work? What if I could allow my desire to help people come to know the intersection of who they are and what they do be the focus of my life’s work? What if my vocation is helping you find yours? (It still feels so meta.)

I came to ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ” searching for something and I found it.

It wasn’t what I expected or how I expected to find it, though. I found it through a long process of letting my voice be heard, and being told that I have something good to offer others. And all along the way I was invited out into the world to do something uniquely and unquestionably my own.

Which is what I was looking for.

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The post I Came to ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ” Searching for Something: My MATC Journey appeared first on ÌìĂÀÊÓÆ” of Theology & Psychology.