MLK Day

Happy MLK Day to you, my Readership!

Today I found out that there is absolutely nothing to do in St. Louis on Martin Luther King Day except to sit at home and think about... Martin Luther King!  I was lucky I was able to get into the practice rooms because otherwise it would've been a perfectly good day wasted at home doing things like resting and blogging and laundry and thinking about MLK, which can be great, but not when you need to get stuff done.  I am seriously thankful that I was able to log in about three hours at the piano before I nearly fell over from hunger and had to leave, knowing I wouldn't be able to get back in the building.  And that's when I realized there was nothing else for me to do but head over to Bread Co. and settle in for a while before I had to go teach.

Things here are... fine, if you want to call it that.  I've been realizing more and more every day that I really am an artist.  I've longed to be here (in this place of arrival where I can call myself an artist and not have second thoughts about it) for so long that now it feels... well, strange.  I have a love-hate relationship with it if I'm honest with myself.  I absolutely love what I do.  I wouldn't trade it for a million day-jobs with steady hours, a nice retirement portfolio, and a great health insurance package, none of which I have.  And if you think of all the stereotypes of artists, I absolutely fit them, though probably not in the ways you'd expect.  I make my living by educating children in the art of my instrument and performing for a local manifestation of the church (in my case a Lutheran school -- sidenote: the church has been employing artists everywhere for centuries), I live in part by the generosity of some really great and loving people who have taken me in (harken back to the patronage system anyone?), I spend a great deal of time by myself working on music that takes months to perfect when I should probably be practicing the stuff people pay me for instead, nobody really understands what exactly it is that I do all day, and I have absolutely no idea where my life is headed.  And about the time I think a man might enter the picture, he leaves about as quickly as he comes in.

It's the stuff of operas, let's be honest.

And if you actually follow that thought out to its logical conclusion, then my character (the role of the female ingenue) dies alone at the end, usually of consumption or a broken heart or both.

Agh!

And now you know why we artists feel tortured all the time...

I have a friend in New York who is actually trying to make it in New York as a pianist and well, we might as well be living parallel lives in alternate universes because he says it's the same for him.  No time, no money, and no second person to share in the torture.

And when I say torture I mean sheer delight.  Mostly. 

But truly, it is a delight... (are you catching on to the love-hateness yet?)  It's a delight to be able to do what we do and love what we do and pass that on to other people.  I spent nearly two hours today working on one of the most beautiful and difficult chamber pieces I've ever had the pleasure of encountering.  And then I spent another hour working on two or three other wonderful pieces.  My brain was mush when I left the practice room and it felt great.  Who else can say that??  It's just that the rest of my life -- you know, the big stuff like where I'm headed career-wise and whether I'll ever find the right person and actually settle down -- feels really unstable and lonely sometimes.  And by sometimes, I mean all the time.

I don't like to admit that.  Not in writing.  Maybe behind the closed door of my counselor's office, but not in writing.  Not when I have to take responsibility for those words...

I don't know.  There aren't any easy answers.  We're at the point in my adult life where there aren't any easy answers or quick fixes anymore.  I know beyond the shadow of a doubt that I have a gracious, loving, and faithful savior who is only ever interested in my ultimate good.  And I trust him completely.  But it doesn't make the journey any less painful.  There are days when I totally live Proverbs 18:14 -- A man's spirit will endure sickness, but a crushed spirit who can bear?

I promise I'm not trying to be overly dramatic.  Learning the patience of unanswered prayer is no easy thing...  and there really just aren't any answers right now.  And I have no control over that.  It's frustrating and hard and it requires more of me than I'm ok with.

I'm going to see my counselor on Thursday and to be honest, I could fall over I'm so excited about it... not because she will have the answers, but because I know I'll feel heard in a deeper way than anyone else in my life hears me and she will tell me the things my restless heart needs to hear instead... because she will point me back to Jesus.