Simply Challenged.

What's in a name...

I decided to take a break from all the heavy stuff just to post a bit about something else. I can never stray too far from tying it all back to Jesus. Ha. I guess it's because my identity is all holed up in Him. 

Simply Challenged. I actually came up with the name about 6 or 7 years ago in high school. At the time I was spending a "study break" drawing these highly unproportionate cartoon dogs that had big heads and tiny bodies. To me, they were bizarre representations of the stereotypical sub-cultures of the high school world. They were the visual embodiment of the moody, angst-filled, hormonal teenager. I grouped these characters under the title of a comic set I had intended to create, entitled "Simply Challenged". 

The title was born out of the desire to convey the two points of views of a teenage life: challenging on the inside, among relationships and emotions, and yet simple and shallow from an outsider's perspective. Of course, this was all very theoretical in my mind, and I had never really had any strong intentions to draw this up into a comic at all.

Fast forward to today. This blog was conceived out of a desire to share some of the lessons and experiences God has been teaching me, with the purpose of encouraging others. I wanted to give it a clever name, I always like the clever things. I was tempted to fall back and name it something really indie/hipster-like in an attempt to make it cryptic and "deep". You can imagine names like, "The Lonely Sunrise", "Wooden Tables", "Where I Wander", "Dirty Hands" or "Broken Branches"...I honestly could come up with these for days. 

But that was just it, I could go backwards and use those titles to interpret a meaningful experience in my life and thus make it "deep" and perfect for my blog, or I could do the opposite. I like to work backwards sometimes. I like to create meaningless titles and then breathe meaning into them. Not this time. 

The title of my long forgotten intended comic series came back to mind. I kept thinking it was boring and flat. Then I began to think about how many times I kept facing simple life events but make them into huge challenges. Take it however you will. On the other hand we do face things that are big challenges, and they seem insurmountable to us, but in God's perspective (here comes the Sunday School answer), they really are not as impossible as they appear. The solutions really are "simple" but getting to them is often a challenging process. 

I just gave you a mess of how to interpret why my blog is titled the way it is. I think the interpretation can be up to you too though. Feel free to tell me the meaning you derive from it. 

All in all, the name satisfied my desire to represent my thoughts in a personal and meaningful way, and it held just enough cleverness with the semi-oxymoronic nature of the words. 

I'm really not a clever person. I'm not as clever as I wish I could be, nor as creative as people give me credit for. I just strive to make things beautiful and pleasing in my own way, and we all do that, well most of us anyway. I would say that that broadly defines the spirit of creativity. 

In any case, don't settle for something you aren't pleased with. I never can. Seek to settle for something that satisfies your creative desire, something in which the meaning you strive to represent is represented in the exact way in which you pictured it.