Life's Music Lesson

Life evolves fast--or maybe not so fast, judging by my sporadic posts and the way they don't seem to change much. I'm not here to comment on my past posts that seem to be so fickle and immature, though. I just wish I had had the perspectives and insights I do now from lots of events of the last year-and-a-half--actually I could go back lots farther than that--so I wouldn't have gotten into the messes I have, where I do my best to take care of things in the instance, but end up messing up financial affairs, musical endeavors, and relationships with others in the process, because I don't have the benefit of experience and insights that come with future events. Why can't we do the reverse? Learn the lessons, gain the insights and perspective, and then apply them to earlier situations before we mess them up, or at least muck up the waters so badly that it's hard to get back to where we should be. Wish we could start over, knowing what we know now. Life isn't like that for a reason, I know, and we have our Savior, Jesus Christ, to make it truly possible to overcome the past, make things right in His way, and go on to a bright future--but in the moment, it can be hard. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to ask for forgiveness, but in the process talk about how hard the situation was in the first place to be in. I hope all those I have hurt, disappointed, let down, and asked too much of or not enough of can forgive me--but I hope they can understand that sometimes there are things they don't know, and sometimes they don't understand, based on different experiences, background, abilities, and opportunities, why sometimes I felt I had my hands tied, or felt I had to take the opportunities I had. Callings in the church can be hard enough to negotiate, but for music, it's a particularly tricky field to maneuver through. I'm grateful for so many opportunities, but sometimes they are hard to approach in the right way, and hard for others to understand, when it's someone's profession, years of education, sacrifice, and training, and their desires to share on a wider basis than just in the local area that comingle in a calling, many times not so peacefully. I don't know that many professional musicians well. I don't get to talk to them and get their input on dealing with these conflicts that I face so much. I don't run in those circles anymore. I'm a wife and a mom, but I still have the same talents, the same inspiration, the same desires to share, that I did before. In fact, since being married, so many things have come to me, solidified, and become crystallized. But now, because I do have such wonderful priorities of being a wife and a mother, when my compositions and arrangements seem to be most in flower, I am very limited in my opportunities to use them, and unfortunately, have to find myself taking opportunities within the ward, within callings, to fully express them. That doesn't work very well in a lay church. I've messed a lot things up in the process of doing so, in the midst of a ward where you live and experience your life events, bad and good, trying to push forward musical endeavors you are trying to make happen because that's where your sanity is and sometimes some of your greatest joys and the greatest feeling of closeness to the Lord come--where I can fully express to Him, in a way not possible any other way, the feelings of my heart, my testimony, my love. Just wish I didn't have to hurt others in the process of doing so. Life causes its own learning--it doesn't come with instructions. I'm sure it won't be the last time of hurting others through serving--we're imperfect, after all. I wish I could go to a new environment and start over, but I just don't think that's in the cards, and it's just running away from the learning. So I push through, hoping not to mess things up anymore--being OK with removing myself from situations where that might very well occur. And maybe that's the solution--being OK with my talents and their place enough that I can say they can't coexist peacefully with other service opportunities. Music is unlike anything else where lay people and professionals have to serve side by side. It's its own animal. Grateful for that animal. Just wish it didn't bite so much.