No Creativity Without Vulnerability
What my near-decade journey of writing my latest book has taught me.
Eight years ago, I began writing a book. It was not my first, but my eighth. As I started, I figured it would be like the books that preceded it.
Anytime you take something precious in your heart and endeavor to share it with the world, it is an emotional journey, to say the least.
It involves hours upon hours of...
Praying, studying, writing.
Erasing, wrestling, re-writing.
Loving it, hating it, but most of all feeling held to stay with it until you’ve said the thing that gripped your heart and won’t let go.
Writing is hard work. Editing is far harder.
Edit after edit. Cut after cut, to get to a final product worth someone’s most precious commodity: their open-hearted attention.
(All of this speaks nothing of the many details surrounding publication and promotion.)
That said, every book up till now has been a deep-dive commitment of nine months to a year of my life, give or take.
But when my heart was ignited to write a book about the goodness of God as Father, and how the Godhead, the Bible, all of theology, and indeed our very existences are only clearly seen through the lens of Jesus, I had no idea what I had bargained for.
It called me to the very core of my deepest wrestlings, longings, fears, and dreams. Like a Pandora’s box, it ripped back the rug on many of the places I’d held onto some schizophrenic version of God, angry one moment and loving the next, and brought every question lovingly and slowly out of the woodwork.
There are many days I wondered if this book would ever reach you.
This week, it officially received a release date.
Reconstructing Dad: Discovering the God Who Looks Just Like Jesus releases July 17, 2026, through CrossRiver Media. Pre-orders open on Father’s Day, June 21.
Over the coming days, I’ll be reaching out to seek a select group of people to serve as the Launch Team for this book. If you’ve been part of this community for any length of time, I’d love to have you in the room.
But before any of that, I want to take a minute to talk to the artist in you about what this process has been teaching me.
Mostly, it’s this:
There is no creativity without vulnerability.
The very act of creation requires nakedness, proximity, and union between parties. It’s the only way we ever produce anything remotely real.
Everything we try to create apart from vulnerability will feel artificial, veiled, and ultimately self-seeking.
A sterile imitation attempting to bypass incubation.
There is no creativity without vulnerability.
In a world of mass production, we’re starving for artists who will remain driven by pure-hearted passion and devotion, not profit or duplication.
True creativity requires baring one’s soul and risking rejection.
It is not found in the crowd, or the chasing of algorithms or popularity polls, but in secret and sacred spaces of intimate affection and tender care.
True creativity is conceived away from the eyes of the watching world, only to be shared and held by others after many stages of gestation, as something viable is ready to be presented.
And here’s the key. If it is true art, true beauty, it is presented as a gift for the blessing of others. Everything else is just an orphan song of trying to prove one’s worth through applause.
The greatest advice I would offer any would-be artist is to honor and refuse to rush the delicate process of vulnerability.
Neither cast your pearls before swine nor present an offering that has not yet been carried with you through the refiner’s fire.
Shield it from cynics, staying ever aware that some of the greatest critics of true art are those who’ve never braved the intimately honest spaces to create something themselves. A tree will be known by its fruit.
Some of the greatest critics of true art are those who’ve never braved the intimately honest spaces to create something themselves.
Mostly, if you have received a spark of inspiration that has even the smallest seed of life within it, don’t despise it, but nurture it. Don’t rush. Be patient, allowing the Spirit of God, the ultimate Creator, to make all things beautiful in their time.
Remember that art is sufficiently worthy all on its own, never needing to “become” something. It already is.
Offer it as a gift to God.
Let it matter to you.
And when God opens the door to share it, refuse to be obsessed with those who don’t wish to receive it. Offer it instead to fellow sojourners as a cup of water or a piece of bread to strengthen them for the journey.
Most of all, rejoice that, though you may not see it, somewhere a rising artist is beginning to believe and picking up their brush…all because you first dared to paint.
God is our Creator.
You are His poetry.
He made you wildly creative.
Stay vulnerable and create.
We need what you see.
More on the Reconstructing Dad Launch Team is coming this week. Stay close.