With The Perrys - A Word for Writers and Other Sufferers of Writer's Block

Episode Date: August 21, 2023

A conversation with Preston about his book-writing experience turns into a much bigger dialogue about the creative process. Jackie asks Preston about the obstacles he’s run into moving from poet to author, and Preston explains why he really doesn’t believe in writer’s block. The Perrys talk about battling perfectionism, receiving critiques, and inviting other people into the writing journey. Check out Gay Girl, Good God.   Take our brief listener survey.  Subscribe to the Perrys' newsletter: https://withtheperrys.myflodesk.com/zhfus4jx1s Join Preston's discipleship community for men: https://www.patreon.com/PrestonPerry/membership To support the work of the Perrys, donate via PayPal: https://paypal.me/withtheperrys Shop BOLD Apparel: boldapparel.shop Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, Saints and AIDS. How art thou? What up with y'all? How's your day? I'm tired. Why? Because I've been up every night. Writing. Writing what?

I'm writing the book. About what? About evangelism and stuff, man. Tell us more. No, I want to save it for the people. I mean, this is kind of how you start to stir up energy so that when you drop your pre-order link, they will click it. Okay, so yeah, I'm writing the book about evangelism, about engaging with you. engaging with the world around you

and basically trying to teach people how to give the gospel with gentleness and respect because we have a lot of people out here giving the gospel nowadays but they're just jerks about it. Got it. But also the book is to teach people how to be bold in their faith

and be courageous well at the same time being wise and it's also like a slash you know slash memoir of my story too so how I became. an evangelist. That's sweet, because I bet

when you was robbing people, you did not see this part of your story. No. You didn't think, oh, man, I'm robbing today and I'm writing tomorrow. No. You didn't see that.

No. Well. Your latter end was greater. Yeah, so one, I never stuck up anybody. I just breaking houses a lot. So I was going to make that clear. I know that's the lesson too evil. I wasn't raised in such a way

where we distinguished between different types of robberies. I'm sorry. Because you said it was like a lesser. No, to be, to be honest, I never imagined my life being any of this. I never thought I would be married. I never thought I would have children. And so, you know, that's just what happens with, what happens with, you know, God gets to a life. You know what I'm saying?

He changes, changes us. Before we dig into this conversation on boldness, courage, in evangelism, and ministry, I think even in relationships that might also be helpful to apply boldness to that. The question is, what has been the most, what has been the hardest part of your writing process? Because I think when I have conversations with people who are authors, I think people underestimate how difficult writing a book. Well, how difficult writing a good book is. I think it's very easy to write something that's actually not good. You just put sentences down.

Let me tell you. I think we did a podcast years ago about writer's block or something like that. Maybe. I can't remember. but man, I think I told somebody on, I was going to say Twitter, but thread, but thread, that's called thread, right? Threads. I told somebody threads yesterday that I like literally, no, it was to do from, yeah, that singer or whatever. I really, I had a pity party in the office one day.

I was like, Lord, I thought I was a writer. Like, I literally cannot write. I think being a spoken word artist for so long has taught you how to communicate a lot. in a little. Right. Right. And so essentially what I did, you know, for five years touring, doing poetry was I was writing, you know, five-minute sermons in poems. And so when I had to write long periods of time, like it's just, it's just different. You know what I'm saying? So like a lot of times you just don't feel like you have nothing else to say. Yeah. It's just like, this is, this is tough. And so, and then, you know, my ADHD, it's not set up for, like,

writing the book. And so that worked against me. And so, like, it was. And so, like, was just a lot of obstacles that I had to get over writing the book. Yeah. Yeah, I think when it comes to writing, and this is just a pivot to encourage writers out there, like I think you have to understand the art of writing is like dance. And dance has different forms, different expressions, right? And so you have ballet, you have hip-hop, you have classical. You might be really good at ballet.

Yes. That don't mean you good at hip-hop. Because, yeah, that's so good because I thought, you know, man, I'm a writer. So the transition from being a poet to a book writer is, oh, it's, you were a creative writer. I was a creative writer. And so my, so my editor is like, oh, my gosh,

that sentence was so great, but we need 90 more of them. And I'm like, I said, I said what I wanted to say, though. And I started to get frustrated. And my first editor, he really was encouraging me to be like, no, like, this is a different muscle that you have to have to work. And so it was tough at first But I didn't came around God has been

Well that's good A bullet point I don't think all the y'all should write books Personally Wow Why you say that I mean the honesty Just shot from your mouth

Like a cannon I don't think that's for everybody I don't think that's for everybody Why do you say that? I don't think everybody's good at it But I think we have this kind of capitalistic system call, you know, church resources and church ministry where we give advances and book deals to people who have

fame and notoriety and a face. It may be an interesting story, but don't actually have the skill of writing. And so I think if the Lord has called you to do it, I'm not going to push it back against what God is calling someone to do just because you might not have the skill set. But I also feel like sometimes we are publishing books and people are not finishing the book, not because they don't like reading,

but because they don't like reading you. And so I think even just stewarding our excellence, sometimes we're putting energy in places that we were never even made to put energy into. So that might actually be really discouraging. But it's just like with James, he says like not many of you should be teachers. Teaching is a very good thing, but not everybody should do it.

Well, let me ask you this, though, because it's different. I mean, for us, I don't think our publishers would have wanted anybody else to write our books because people have heard our voices with our particular writing for so many years. And so somebody can read a book written by me and they can tell if somebody else wrote it because they heard my poetry for so long.

But most people are not even writing their books in the first place. And so if you have a person who does have you know... That's fine. Get assistance. You're just saying don't write your book yourself if you don't have their gift of writing. No, I'm simply saying,

not everybody should write if they are not called to it or skilled to do it. And if you are not skilled to do it, then you can outsource people who can for you. Even Paul had a scribe. Yeah. Okay. Romans was communicated verbally and he had a scribe to write it down. So it's all right to hire somebody to make it sound pretty. All I'm saying is just because you're popular, just because you're famous,

just because you told a really cool story twice on a stage somewhere in somebody's church in Houston, that does not mean that you should be writing books. Maybe a blog. Maybe a blog. Maybe a couple reels, right? Maybe a podcast. But a book. Anyway, that has nothing to do with our conversations today.

Our intros never have nothing to do with the topic. I just got stirred up because that's, because I told publishers this. So this ain't nothing I ain't said. I had an event where I had to talk to all of the Christian publisher, like the big wigs and the Christian publishing industry. And my whole speech was y'all are giving books to books to. people with platforms when there are plenty of people that we do not know that are in their local churches being faithful with more wisdom, but you don't see them because they got 500 followers.

That's good. That's good. Some got to change. Because I would assume that the publishing industry is different now because social media. Social media has changed a lot of things. I think when we were growing up in the 90s, I think publishers look for creativity, look for people with wisdom, look for people with good insight that had great writing ability. Now, it's like, who can we find, you know, with the biggest platform and how can we try to create something that will sell? Right.

We might as well turn this conversation into a conversation about writing since we're here. Oh, wow. Okay. Because, I mean, we 12 minutes in. So we might as well just, you know. So what is writers block? What is writers block for you? What does that look like?

For me, writer's block, it's different. right because for me writing poetry and writing books is two totally different things but I don't necessarily believe in writers block as as more than I mean what am I trying to say I don't believe in writers block per se I do believe sometimes you might be writing and you might not have nothing to say but a lot of times you don't have nothing to say because you haven't worked the muscle yet right for me when I I can sit down and write a poem right now it probably won't be the best poem but I've worked that muscle of writing poetry where I can write something.

So I think a lot of times people say, I have writers, because they can't write something that they feel like it's great, right? But if you can't write at all, it's probably because you haven't worked that muscle. Writing is a muscle. You know what I'm saying? And so I don't even know if that makes sense.

And so I have, I think when I first started writing my book, I was like, yo, I can't write like I write a poem, right? And that's because I haven't worked that muscle as a book writer yet. but now I'm getting better and better and better at it. And so this writing block kind of doesn't exist per se. And so I think it's the difference between not being able to write something good and not being able to write at all.

Yeah, so distinguishing between like sometimes it's not your inability to put something on the page. It's simply, I lost my train of thought. What you say? Yeah, I think it's a difference between not being able to write at all and not being able to write something good. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a difference between not being able to put some on the page and putting some on the page,

but it's not perfect enough for you. So really the issue isn't writer's block is perfectionism. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's what I was trying to do. I think. I think when they say, I have writer's block. It's like, no, it's like you just haven't worked that muscles. Like when you go to the gym, your muscles give out

not because you have weightlifting block. It's just that muscle isn't strong yet. Right. And so, you know, I think that it's a muscle. that we have to develop. Yeah, I've kind of seen that there are different things at play in so-called writer's block. I think perfectionism is definitely one.

I think another category is also ignorance. And I noticed that when I'm working on a sermon or when I was writing my books, is that when I would get to a point where I had nothing else to say, sometimes it was because I didn't know enough yet to say it. And so sometimes what you're coming against, again, is not writer's block, is that you need to study more and learn more because you have more content. When you think about people who have PhDs, for example, a dissertation is like 50,000 words, max or minimum, I'm not sure.

That's a lot of words on one very niche defined subject, but they have those words because they've studied four, five, six, seven years forward. And so I think if we apply that, same kind of like diligence to our writing process, I think you'll see that you have more than enough to say once you get it in your brain. Let me ask you this question. Gay Girl Good God was a very well-written book. And I think your poetic side really shine through that book.

I know when I first started writing my book, it seems like my editors was like, okay, Preston, we don't need four metaphors in one sentence. Or even when I write lines like, the hum of morning was quiet. It's like, no, you could just kind of say the morning was quiet. It's like, no, I like the word hum, right? And so, like, what is the balance between creating a book that is theological in nature while at the same time allowing creativity to shine and at the same time not allowing your creativity to hinder what you're trying to communicate? I think that's the main point is that you got to learn the discipline of scratching your creative itch while at the same time being. committed to clarity.

Yeah. Because sometimes we can be so creative, creative, that the only person that understood what we were saying was us. Yeah. And so if you're a teacher, then your aim is education and information. And so it can't just be for me to scratch my little creative. So I think I've just found the balance of, and I think editors help with this.

Even if you don't have an editor, having a friend who can say, I don't know what you're saying. I don't get what that means. what are you trying to communicate? What am I supposed to walk away with that? And I think when you have those kinds of conversations, another issue I think we have that connects to this one is we want to create without community.

And that's actually not how we're built. Even the triune God was a community when he created. And so I think applying even how God expresses his creativity should apply to how we express our creativity. And so don't be afraid to invite other people into your process. So if you know that you're bent is to show, shroud meaning because you want to be so cute and creative in your sentences, then bringing a friend that's more logical, more plain, and they'll be able to counteract that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think a lot of times we don't bring people into our creative process because our creativity it means so much to us. We're an artist and we're sensitive about our dishes. About our stuff. You know what I'm saying? But that was the beauty of traveling with you and our friends. to our amazing spoken word poets.

I mean, we were able to just feed off one another so well and our chemistry was so well. And when I wrote online, Jeanette was like, that's too much. And I would tell Jeanette, like, Jeanette, you don't need to put that metaphor right there. And so that was just really, really, you know, good. But I have to be honest, though, when I start writing this book and I'm having,

it was a different, it's a different thing when you have non-creatives critiquing your work. because for so long I had nothing but creative artists kind of saying oh that metaphor was too much or you can go harder right there but it's kind of like

man like what is the I guess you for somebody who is a creative who started to edit did you ever like did you ever have a problem with somebody who wasn't creative trying to tame your creativity because I know that for me

it's kind of like oh you're just you're not a poet That's the reason why you can't appreciate this. Yes. So I remember I had a line in Gay Girl, Good God, where I was describing when my mother found out that I was gay. And I was kind of trying to communicate this scene of the grief that she probably was carrying. Yeah.

And the grief being attached to the fact that she probably wouldn't see her daughter walk down the aisle one day, which now is like God's kindness. but I said I wondered how gray it would make her. And what I was trying to communicate was sadness, lament, grief, right, in the form of a color. And my editor, he scratched that out and he put sad. And I scratched out sad and put back gray. That's what I wanted to say. Like, because there's when you put, when you put gray instead of sad, sad is so, so specific that it leaves no room for the imagination.

So gray, you actually kind of feel that. Gray can, it's so ambiguous that it can. So, yes, but at the same time, I was willing to push back because I was confident in what I was saying. And I think sometimes when you have people speaking into your work, you do have to have a level of humility to receive when they're critiquing you

and when their critique is legitimate. Yet at the same time, they cannot critique you so much that you lose your voice. Yeah. And I just refuse to let us do that. That's the balance because I think one thing that I'm learning, from my editors, because I've had a couple, is they help me find this balance

that I need as a book writer because that word gray, opposed to being sad. Like, for me, as a creative, it invokes an emotion that sad just doesn't, you know, when you, like, when you think about grace, like, for me, I feel something. Sad, I think about something, and it's a difference.

That's good. And so I think that's what creative writing does. Creative writing uses language in a way and manipulates language in the way that just doesn't allow you to understand but see in a particular type of way. But I also think that creatives need people who are non-creatives to kind of reel them back in to kind of balance things out. And I think something that's balanced, especially with its teaching, I think it can be great. And so that's what I had to learn as a book writer. It's like, oh, if there is a balance that I do. need to have. It is. Yeah, it's the editing process, the criticism that grows you as a writer.

You know, you just, you got to have people outside of yourself who don't think like you, who don't have the life experience. Because there's even, how can I say it, there's even a way to approach content, not even sentence construction, but the content also needs help from an outside place. So, for example, I had, how do I, how can I be based? I had a situation where someone was partnering with me on a ministry thing, and they sent me their manuscript beforehand. And it was related to the subject of women and pregnancy. And they were communicating about pregnancy in it being God's blessing and God's sovereign hand over the womb, which is true. But I was like, you have to have some type of caveat for the women in the room who are infertile and who have miscarried or do not have children.

because what they will hear is I'm not blessed, right? But that's because of my experience in women's ministry that I'm able to look at her content and see how I would land on somebody. And so I think like even when it comes to like what you've written, have there been times where you've written something where the content becomes wiser because of somebody else's? Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Like, because I think this is no shade. I love spoken word poetry. So this is no shade to spoken word poetry. But I think a lot, I think, I think in one way, it's amazing how we can construct the five-minute poem and say so much. But I think writing the book kind of show me how a lot of poetry at times lacks depth. What do you mean? Because somebody would think that poetry is the deepest form of writing that exists.

Yeah. But I think true depth is unpacking. Like in some ways, I hope this makes sense because I think the topics are deep, but it's so much more that we can say. It's so much more that we can unpack. And so like, for example, my first chapter was about my life. And, you know, I talked about, you know, my childhood. And I would say things that I would construct sentences like, you know,

when dusk finally grew legs and shakes his home, we would head inside to bathe in my grandmother's smile. So for me, what these sentences did, it gave you a picture, and I feel like that's all the audience needed. But when my editor started to ask me questions, like, what about your grandmother? Why was your grandmother to smile something to bathe in? When dusk finally grew legs and chased y'all home, like, what did you do? And it showed me, like, in my poetry, I'm probably saying, I'm probably giving you a picture by using deep metaphors or creative, beautiful language. but it's so much more that I can say to build upon. And so I think for me, what a good editor did

was to show me that, like, man, like, you probably can create these creative lines because you're not saying a lot, right? But it becomes harder when you have to say and unpack a lot. And it's so much wisdom to give even after this line is created. It's so much to even unpack when that line is said. Does that make sense? And so for me, it was kind of like, that's when it became hard.

I'll write a line. And then when somebody, my editors thought to pick apart that line and say, okay, there's so much you can say from this one line. It's like, I don't have nothing else to say. And I think it's helpful to point out that you can get away with skipping over all of the details in a poem because it's not meant to be that expansive or that broad, right? It's a short form piece of art versus a book. I say that because I also remember when I first started doing poetry a long time ago I had this friend

and she would do, she would get up at these open mics and do these poems that were a solid 12 minutes. Brow. Solid and she wasn't the best, right? So it was like, I think I heard you're talking about. She was.

But it was a cool 15. She wasn't a bad writer. But it was like I was listening to a monologue and I pulled her to the side that I said, hey, sis, I think you're giving us blogs and you're just performing it like a poem, right? And so I say that because somebody could take what you're saying and be like,

oh, I just got to be deeper. I just got to write more. And it's like, no, no, no, no, we don't want a 15 minute point. No, no, no, no, write that in a book if you're going to do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Still give us under five. Yeah, yeah. Because the attention span, you have to be such an excellent rhetorical communicator

to keep somebody's attention past two minutes. Yeah. So when you start itching it, you're going to. and the five and then the ten and then the fifteen, you is giving narcissists. You must think you are Martin Luther King, Jr. You don't have those oratorical skills. Random question, do you miss those spoken word days?

At all? They were fun. I'm talking about like before we were married, like when we were broke. I miss the spontaneity of it. I miss the vibe. So like the whole get, up in front of people that don't know who you are

and you just you just performing this poem to the best of your ability people yelling at you in a good way Those times when we used to go to secular open mics and spit as Christians I was very proud of those moments because we went into some places where they would have choked shoot us up if we weren't good

and I was like you know this is dope that Christians can come in here and hold their own. Honestly I'm grateful for those experiences because everything about being a poet and everything about being a poet on a stage and everything about being a poet on a stage in front of different audiences has completely informed my preaching.

In every way. In every way, the power of inflection, for example. Like, doing poetry, I realize that, you know, you sometimes have poets that feel like you can get people attention by raising your volume. So they're loud the whole time.

When I realized that, you can actually get people's attention by speaking like him. Like just being at a really like I'm down here. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Because a whisper can yell. Yeah. In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

And so people are leaning in to hear you. And then you bring them up. Then you bring them down. Like you use your voice to create this kind of dance and roller coaster. And it isn't to, some people can use that to manipulate you towards evil ends. My goal is to take advantage of the emotions to draw you near to God. Because I don't think the

Psalmists are doing anything different. You have Lamentations 3 who begins with like, God has did this to me and he is treating me like a bear and da-da-da-da-da-da. And just going in on the nature of God. And so your heart rate is up and it feels aggressive. It feels like the beginning of a drama movie. And then he slows you down and say, but he does not. You know what I'm saying? Like I feel like there's an art to preaching that I learned by preaching

in poetry. Yeah. That's good. That's good. Because what you basically is saying is like a roller coaster. Like if you was on a roller coaster and all you was doing

is just experience and drop after drop after drop and you had no anticipation of being slowly brought up. It kind of takes away from the experience. It's like when we... But if you're going fast and then going slow,

it's kind of like it just makes experience better. When we talked about one of the preachers at our old church, how he would just stay up here the whole time. And he wasn't even yelling. It was like loud talking. I was kind of yelling at us. Stop yelling at me, bro.

But it's something about the monotony redundancy of it that actually your brain starts to tune it out. And so now you're doing a disservice to your message because you're not honoring the people in front of you, right? And so even paying attention to, oh, I'm losing them because I'm not engaging them even vocally. And I learned that doing poetry. I even remember when I was a part of the church we met at.

And one of the most helpful, you saw how I stopped and it drew you in. One of the most helpful things I learned was our pastor at the time, we were part of this poetry team. And the poetry team was in one section of the church. And they had Bible study happening in the main sanctuary of the church. And the Bible study was a bunch of couches in circles. It wasn't like pews and chairs and stuff like that. And so he had us write a little poem. And it was probably like a two-minute, 30-second poem.

And he was like, all right, so what we're going to do now is we're going to go and perform this poem in front of everybody in the Bible study class. What we didn't know is that he had told everybody in the Bible study class not to look at us, not to pay attention to us, to be on their phones, to be talking to one another, to be giving us ugly faces. And he told us ahead of time, he was like, I don't care. with anybody in that room does, you perform your heart out. Do you understand how weird and awkward it is to be performing with all of your energy and people are acting like you're invisible? But what that did for me is now when I preach, I don't care what you have to say. I don't care if you disagree.

Like I'm going to give all of my energy regardless of the responses of the people. And you learn that when you do poetry. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's dope. that's actually a really great exercise but also too what poetry has taught me is you know

when I first started doing poetry I kind of did that like you did what? Like yelled the whole time because in my mind I thought yelling is how you get people's attention right? I never thought and sometimes if you're outside you got to yell

yeah if you're on the mic you know yeah yeah but but what changing your tone and your cadence is up It literally, like, you just did it. Like, when you got softer, like, you caught my attention in a different way. And I had to learn that. And so what you're basically trying to say is everybody who teaches should take a poetry course. No.

I don't. But I am saying that the Lord can you, if you are in an arena that feels different than the arena you're in now, the same skills you learned than that one can be applied in this one. That's what I mean. And so if you worked at Wendy's before, it don't mean that when you get to a church that there aren't there there there's always little nuggets and tips that we can pull from everything that has has uh put placed us in that makes sense i will say uh another part of writers brock and we said this before that we have to acknowledge is that sometimes also it's not writers block it's the holy

spirit is creating space for humility yeah when i say that what comes to your that's true because I was humbled when I first started writing my book because like I said I thought that the transition would be easy from poetry to writing a book and I was like why can I do this? It wasn't just me kind of experiencing a new form of writing or whatever

it was also the Lord really wanted me to depend on him in the way that I hadn't depend on him before and so God was kind of like challenging me to say Preston when you come in this office I want you to seek me And also, too, I've given you this gift of poetry and you've done it kind of on your own for so long. You kind of forgot that I'm the one who gave you this gift.

And so, like, you know, I really had to stop praying. And when I stopped praying and start seeking the Lord, I feel like the Lord allow me to think more clearly, to look at things from a different perspective. And I stopped having a pity party. And when I stopped having a pity party, I started to grow. you know what I'm saying, by the grace of God. And so I really think God just wants us to depend on him.

And a lot of times when you have writer's block or when you cannot write, I don't even want to call this writer's block when you can't write, I think you need to pause and ask yourself like, man, am I truly seeking the Lord? Is this even the time for me to write this? Because God wants you to write things in its timing as well.

You know what I'm saying? And so for a lot of times when I, like, I think we told this on a podcast before, but we were friends when you came up with the idea for us to write the poem to fall. And you literally took a megabuzz from St. Louis to Chicago so we can write the poem to fall. And this was in our prime of writing poetry. We was writing poems all the time. And you came out there and we couldn't write it.

No, we could not. I was like, why can't we write this poem? And we didn't know that God wanted us married when we wrote that poem. And so we wrote that poem, the first year of our marriage, because it just wasn't God's time yet. Right. That's good. And so I think that a lot of times when we can't write, it's not because we suck at writing.

It's just God doesn't want that to be produced at that time. And I want to just affirm that if God is hindering you from being able to write or create, it is because he has something better to give you apart from your own flesh. What I mean is I think if you have a particular skill set, we could do really good by ourselves. Like we could do great things by ourselves.

But imagine when God, the creator of heaven and earth, the creator of all beauty, comes alongside you and blesses what you do. Yeah. That takes it up a whole other notch. And I say that because sometimes we look at humility and we look like God hindering something as God punishing us or God trying to hold us back. But he's actually trying to create spirit.

space for you to do something better. Yeah. Something more lasting, something more worthwhile. And he's also protecting your heart. Yeah. Because I know for me, I am convinced that my sermon, because sermon writing is a part of this conversation too,

honestly. But I'm convinced that the sermons I create, the books I write, the Bible studies I write, because it's been such a hard dance with the Holy Spirit, I know he blessed me. You get what I'm saying? Like I know he blessed my imagination for me to create. Like there will be times where the sentences would flow in such a way where I knew it wasn't me.

Yeah, that's good. I knew it wasn't me. And so what it does is it puts me in a position, even in this moment, who am I giving glory to? Yeah. And so I'm not even boasting in myself because I can't. Yeah. And that's the humbling thing. It's the humbling thing, but the thing that's the most, that humbles you,

the most is actually what you need the most because what you're essentially saying is a lot of times we want to do things and God is saying, no, it's going to be way better if you do it with me. Yes. If I do it with you. Yes. You know what I'm saying? And so like I went from, you know, writing this book and it's like, okay, Preston, you've been writing for a long time, but you haven't been writing like this.

You need to allow me to walk with you. Yes. Right? And so my hand will be on it. And that's when we actually, you know, start flowing. when all these spirit takes control. Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Because we were, I think we call God creator and we forget he's creative. Yeah. What does it even mean to be creative? It means to take something and make something out of nothing. That's what he did, right? Like a poem is I am taking letters and forming them into words and making sentences and beautiful metaphors out of them. I have created something from nothing.

If that ain't what he's good at. Yeah. That's, that's, you know what I'm saying? So it's just like if, if we do need all of, we need inspiration from all the people. But like the holy, like even, even you being a Christian is a creative act of the Holy Spirit. He created in you a new heart and gave you a new, redefined, reorganized, reoriented spirit. That's good. That's good. That's good.

Is to create. That's real good. And so, like, I think when we start to actually trust God to come alongside all of our creative endeavors, we will discover a side of our ability and our creativity that we never even tapped into. That's great. Period. That's great. I think that was a mic drop.

Was it? Or Carmx drop. I'm not a fan of Carmex. Why? Because it has, like, this waxy vibe to it. It does. I don't really like that. Because my lips feel great.

Like, I will not preach with Carmex because I'm just, afraid then I'm going to have like my life. My lips feel great for the first five minutes when I'm wearing Carmex and then it feels like somebody it does. It does. It feels like you dipped your mouth in the glade candle. Right. Yeah. So why do you buy them? Because I only have this because you have it. I don't know. I think it's my mama. She's always have a whole bunch of Carmex. You just said you don't like them and you always buy it. I like them but I don't. Okay. Bye y'all. Peace.

With the Perry's is produced by the Perrys with support from Amanda Reed and Channing B. McBride. Editing by Xavier Fairley, video recording and audio production by Kim Powell, artwork by hop, and music by swoop. If you'd like to support The Perrys, you can visit the link in the show notes.

This is with the Perrys. Thank you for listening. Now go with God.