"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, 'I'll try again tomorrow.'" - Mary Anne Radmacher
"How's the music going?" Since quitting my full-time job, I've received this question numerous times. After all, I was leaving to pursue my career, to "do my thing," which, naturally, included music, among other things. When I did "Dreams and Visions" concert last May, I felt such a surge of power and energy that I crossed through a portal vowing to never look back. I am an artist, I told myself. And I need to do this kind of stuff all the time.
Now, 7 months later, what do I have to show for it? Where am I? What am I? Who am I? These are some of the existential questions that have been knocking on my door these days, ushered in, to an extent by this holy season of advent in which we anxiously await and prepare for the coming of Christ - at Christmas, yes, but more significantly and relevantly, in our lives and the life of our world. What am I birthing? What am I bringing? If I am united with Mary's mission to bring Christ to the world, what is the life growing in me to produce for the good of humankind?
I sit here listening to a recording of Sara Groves' concert at an Illinois women's prison. It was a free download off her site. A simple sharing of her labor of love with her fans. She's singing her rendition of "We Three Kings" and I'm reminded of Christmas two years ago when I made a list for what I hoped would become my Christmas album. It's two years, one concert and one quit job later, and the album is nowhere on the horizon. "When's your CD coming out, Kristin?" and "Are you recording?" My answer, I give with disappointment in myself is, "...No... I'd like to, but not yet..." When?
"How long, O Lord? How long will the wicked be allowed to gloat?" (Psalm 94:3)
I can't imagine there aren't people happy to see me "failing" to make good on my commitment to myself. People who are wondering, when? how? why not? And even if there aren't ('cause really, I'm that important?), there are those voices that speak inside of me. And I don't have an answer for those voices. Usually just a shrug and a "yeah...when?"
And then, I wake up and try again. Try to focus in. Try and narrow down. Try and center into what it is that I'm about and want to do and want to give and be. And I read on:
"Happy are those whom you discipline, Lord, and those whom you teach from your law.
You give them relief from troubled times until a pit is dug for the wicked.
The Lord will not reject his people; he will not abandon his special possession." (12-14)
I am a special possession. Even if not to myself, I am owned and wanted and made useful by a creator who loves and wills me into being, not just 31 years ago, but each and every day, and each and every moment. Nothing is in vain. Nothing goes wasted. No thought, no plan, no hope, no dream, no matter how small, and no matter how many (or few) steps taken toward it is a lost cause. I am not a lost cause. None of us are. If we are living and breathing and waking up every morning (notice that I didn't say getting out of bed, necessarily, although that's helpful), there is hope.
And so I'm doing Jillian Michaels' 30-day Shred. I just finished workout #5 today and I feel awesome. I can feel (and maybe even see) my triceps for the first time in a long time. And as I'm jump roping, jumping jacking, push upping and lunging my ass off, I am remembering the words of my Italian friend who cheered me on along the Florence Marathon route 3 years ago this past November: "Forza e Coraggio!" Strength and Courage. And a tear comes to my heart and eye.
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| I was runnin'. |
