Preserving Your Passion and Identity in the Midst of Change

The world is changing. No one knows what August will look like, much less New Years 2021. My question to you is, “Does it matter?” The easy answer is a loud impassioned, “Yes!”, because what people fear most is the loss of control in the midst of change. Change can also play havoc with your art, your passion, and your identity.

Changing conditions create insecurity that robs you of your confidence and power. Your passion, identity, and value are defined by your Creator, not by society, monetary policy, media reports, or even who sits in the Oval Office.

Your life has changed, is changing, and will continue to change because your world isn’t the same today as it was yesterday, and today will be nothing but a memory by next Tuesday.

Don’t fret.

 

What’s Your Passion?

Celebrity authors who write with power and authority to other writers LOVE what they do, living and breathing their words, creating magic in the way they select and order them. Writers writing to writers speak the same heart language because they share a common passion.

Words and sentence structure don’t do much for me. They’re necessary tools, but putting words together isn’t a thrill, exciting, exciting, or inspiring. Genuine writers are passionate about the craft, the product, and the story.

I work to improve as a writer because it’s a necessary skill. My heart will never boogie a calypso beat when considering cumulative sentence structure. Writing isn’t my passion.

What’s your passion? There’s at least one topic that bumps your blood pressure or flutters your heart by just talking about it.

What’s your art, the framework that puts your world into perspective and explains the unexplainable? What brings you closer to God?

The Art of the Horse

My art was horses. I love everything about them, from the sweet aroma of hay breath to the science of manure. I’m fascinated with the way ears communicate minute private changes and the miracle of motion from four thin legs, one stuck in each corner of a massive assembly of muscle and sinew.

I’ve geeked out thinking of how the slope and angle of soft tissue on bone can limit or expand a horse’s ability to fly.

Tack. Mannerism. Hair. Hooves. False nostrils and ovarian follicles.

I loved, dreamed, studied, worked, and learned all I could about horses from books, recordings, clinics, trainers, dudes, and more than anything else, from horses. From conception to death, horses were the center of my life for more than half of my life.

Were.

Passion and Identity Go Together

Not only is my life with horses mostly past, but my passion somehow moved from the burn of center flame to a slow simmer on the warming rack. I can’t imagine how it will feel when it cools further. When that passion is exhausted, will something also die in me?

Identity is important. If you’re retired, live in an empty nest, or lost the source of your passion, how did you handle the change of identity? Where are you important? How do you express your passion, your art?

I know horses. I do horses. I understand horses, and I can change a horses’s life. With horses, I owned my identity, my power, authority, and confidence.

But that’s the past, and like you, I live in the present. Things change, and you change with them. Everything you have is a gift on loan from God. Including your passion.

Things are changing. Everywhere.

Losing a Love

I suspected that everything is temporary, but never understood it until God asked me to give up my gray AQHA gelding, Bo. What did I love most in life next to Jesus and my husband? Bo. When the trailer carrying him pulled out of our driveway, I felt a crazy mixture of obedience and gratitude. I did not dwell on the loss.

The journey that brought you and me together on this page began a dozen years ago with Bo. There’s much more to that story, but it hasn’t aged enough yet to share.

Has God asked you to return a gift? Is your season with something you loved over? Did that loss affect your passion or identity?

God gives and He takes away, but He wastes nothing.

Passion Creates Motivation

How do I feel about losing my life with horses after they held me up, gave me purpose, inspired my days and nights, and gave me a joy, confidence, knowledge of the Lord, and artistic expression I never experienced anywhere else?

God’s plan for humanity and His specific plan for you isn’t based on a whim, fancy, or circumstance. Passion creates the drive to learn, practice, fail, rejoice, apply a bandaid to spiritual or physical skinned knees and persevere.

God never takes away without giving something better in return. I’ve discovered that in the best way, that something better is more of Himself.

What’s your passion? Really. You need to know. That gift is the key to commitment, humility, success, achievement, and mastery. It’s the door to power, authority, and being an effective kingdom worker.

It’s the gateway to your purpose today.

Passion is a Gift with Purpose

Your passion is a gift with a purpose, not something to clutch in your hand and possess. It is yours to be exercised, shared, grown, and used to glorify the Giver of all good gifts.

God is also good enough, loving enough, and practical enough to change your heart when He changes your life. I’ll testify. You won’t be left a pauper in any sense of the word. God is extravagant with good gifts; the trick is recognizing them when they arrive wrapped in rags and tied with broken shoelaces.

God Wastes Nothing

Perhaps my time with horses is drawing to a quiet end. Not with a bang from injury or other inability, but because God has another assignment for me.

Is there life in scratches on paper or characters on a computer screen? I felt something stirring, but wondered how anything without a heartbeat could create passion. And wondered a bit more.

If you’ve wondered yourself, God will let you know what He has in mind for you when you’re ready; in His estimation, not your own. Passion, like love, takes many forms. It changes, grows, smooths, and becomes more comfortable in deeper relationship with the Almighty.

When God changes your life, don’t look down, but look up, out, and be expectant. More is coming.

True passion and power are found in relationship to the Lord Jesus Christ. What’s yours? It’s there. I know that because,

God wastes nothing.

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Related post: Unexpected Fear–When God Changes Your Gifts

Related post: The Wrongness of Worry for Christians

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Get to Know My Amazing Gray, Bo

Would you like to meet Bo and my other amazing gray quarter horse, Swizzle? They knew about God’s plan for me before I did. Amazing Grays, Amazing Grace is the first book in the Gospel Horse Series. It shares training and competition sessions with Bo and his herdmates, as well as the parallel lessons in relationship I learned with God.

If you’re in love with all things horse, leadership, and Jesus, this book is for you. Each short chapter stands on its own. The heartbeat of the horse and the love of God have more in common that I knew.

From the foaling stall to the last breath of The Spotted Wonder, I offer proof that the foundation of relationship with God, horses, and one another is love, commitment, and grace.