Le voyage passionné

You know that part in the Notebook where Allie, right before she goes back to Seabrook, walks into her fiance's office and with tears in her eyes says, "I don't paint anymore."?

I kinda feel like that lately. It may sound funny, but I could relate to Allie when she said this. Was Allie crying specifically about not painting anymore? No. But I think it had something to do with the fact that she felt far away from the freedom of who she truly was. Remembering who she no longer was. Realizing who she wanted to be. And sometimes that's a painful place to be. So, all this to say...

I don't play piano or guitar anymore.

This may seem like a small and insignificant fact to you. Or like disinterest, or just sheer laziness on my part. And it may be a little bit of those things. But mostly I think it's the fact that lately, I kinda feel far away from the freedom of who I truly am. A disconnect of sorts.

For whatever reason, I seem to have given up a lot of things that I love. I couldn't tell you exactly why. Things happen, life happens, and now I feel like passion and color have been drained from my life. Maybe it's fear. Maybe it's laziness. Maybe it's apathy. Probably a little of all the above.

It's not just the things I love that I seem to have put on the back burner but also the purpose God has given me. God has called all of us to go on a journey with him. A journey to live the calling he's put on our lives. I have felt the nudge from the Lord many times. The call to go on this journey to becoming. A passionate journey to being all he's created me to be. But I've resisted. I've ran. It's more than time to hand over my running shoes to him and let him work in me. To let him take me on the journey to living with purpose and passion.

I want to play my piano again. I want to play for hours, coming up with my own melodies, getting all excited like I'm about to write the best song ever written. I want to strum for hours on my pink acoustic guitar, then switch to the old acoustic guitar my grandpa gave me when I was a teenager, getting tons of calluses on the fingertips of my "desperately in need of a manicure" hands, all frustrated because I still can't tune the darn thing to save my life. I want to put music on in the kitchen and bake and bake to my hearts content. I want to create. If for no other reason than just to sate the creativity that my Creator put inside of me.

And to do that, all these seemingly simple and mundane things, makes me feel more free somehow. It's important. It's the way I'm wired.

Creativity makes me tic. Whimsy makes me tic. Inspiration in unexpected places and times. The satisfaction of coming up with a great line for my song, making the perfect fudge brownie, my fingers on the piano keys, reading a book so good it provokes thoughts that turn into a song, pretty notebooks and journals, the perfect song at the perfect moment, a song so beautiful it's breathtaking and heartstopping, the rare moments that you remember to be still and know that He is God.

I want to live like that and for that. I want to start doing the things I love again. And become more of who I really am. I want to passionately, and purposefully take this journey to becoming all God's created me to be.