To all the creators and dreamers and makers and vulnerable people showing up to share their work, words, music. {and this is all of us, anyone breathing, because we all create in some way, all made to produce art of a myriad of types by our Creator}
• A Word For You •
Keep at it.
For two reasons.
1.
It matters to someone somewhere, more than you know. Maybe our work won’t reach or impact tens and twenties and a hundred tens, but it will tend to speak life to one or two or ten.
2.
It matters to you. If your painting or hobby or baking or gift giving or home decorating or volunteering or rambling in the woods or weaving a wreath, offers life-giving happiness and hope and heart to your days, that is a gift of living right there.
Truth is, I need this reminder so often myself. I can easily encourage you, but when it comes to the own voices in my head deriding who I am and how I show up in life and the way I bumble through and my perchance for impatience and selfishness, well, it’s not so easy. It’s easier to believe I’m a fraud and a hypocrite and not one single thing I do matters. It’s easier to believe I mostly excel at messing things up or upsetting people.
My good farmer man drove me to Topeka to attend Behold the Lamb of God Christmas concert by Andrew Peterson and friends.
Andrew Peterson has sung me through 2019, 2020, and 2021. I’ve long loved his music, and especially played the songs, again and again, these past three years. I can’t always say that the rain has quit falling, and I can’t always say that I’ve completely learned to be kind to myself, but his lyrics sing it over and over to me. Learning comes from again and again.
Listening to the familiar chords of Behold the Lamb of God, I whispered gratitude. Grateful to attend the concert. Grateful for the man beside me and his hand I held. Grateful for musicians willing to share their work with the world.
What if Andrew Peterson had listened when his inner critic showed up? When resistance came to call? On days he felt less than?
His music would not have been there singing to me these last three years. I’m really glad he kept on.
It mattered to me. And I’m pretty sure his music impacts a hundred tens besides me.
P.S. ADG comrades…both of Andrew Peterson’s books are lovely reads. Adorning the Dark and The God of the Garden. Especially if you have ever, one time, wrestled with the condemning voices in your head or been attacked by imposter syndrome.
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