There's been something stirring in my heart lately that I need to share. It kind of happened at the start of this year.
You see, last year was a very difficult one for my friends and family. There were numerous situations involving people we love who went to be with the Lord. We even lost our beloved Rottweiler, Roxie.
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While I'll skip going into details, let's just say that it was a challenge or as we used to say, a 'drag'.
At the end of last year we breathed a collective sigh and said, "I hope 2019 is better than last year!"
Well, so far it's started off well. If you read my previous blog post called: A New Year means New Possibilities, then you know that the flip of the calendar gives us a new start.
We could also call it a reboot, restart, or mulligan if you play golf like I do.
I recently heard a song that said, "How could I know joy if I had never known sorrow?" (My paraphrase)
There's a lot of truth to that statement. How could we ever know the joys of life if we didn't experience sorrow? How could we ever know wholeness if we didn't have a broken heart?
Life just throws a lot of stuff at us. Some of it's good and some of it's not. How do you deal with it?
One of my ways of dealing with it is by using the outlet of music and writing. I enjoy these artistic outlets. They help me to process a lot of difficult things that just don't make sense.
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While I would like to say that it's easy to execute these outlets, that's not true at all.
Let's look at an example.
One of the popular movie sequels last year was: Mama Mia! Here we go again. The movie is based on music by the 1970's group Abba.
Regardless of whether you saw the movie or not, you've probably heard the music of the group Abba at some point in your life.
The interesting thing about the group is that: "ABBA were perfectionists in the studio, working on tracks until they got them right rather than leaving them to come back to later on."
The conclusion I come to is that anything worth doing requires work.
Does this mean that you can't do something just for the fun of it? Or course not. But if you're serious about an artistic outlet and have decided to take it to the next level, it requires effort.
I've been writing a series of articles about 'Nurses in war' after being inspired by visiting the battlefields of Gettysburg a couple of years ago. You can find the latest of my articles at the following website link: historyisnowmagazine.com.
You can also read the fine stories that the drummer for our band Wrecknciled wrote and that I edited here: Dabblings from a Drummer.
These are great ways for me to outlet my creative side and also to inspire others.
My encouragement to you is to outlet your creative side. Do you dance? Or sing? Or work puzzles? Whatever it is, enjoy it!
You may just find you have company!