One is that I try to find reasons to be grateful. Another is that I'm often looking for what I can learn and how, in the long run, I can use whatever I'm experiencing as a launch point, to help myself or others. I also try to keep this in perspective, and do my best to trust in God's plan for me, even when I don't understand it. One thing I do that I'd like to elaborate on is that I try to fill my life and keep myself busy with things that make me very happy, which tend to be various ways of creating. I love to create music, I love to create art (I'm no artist, but it's fun), I love to help children learn (creating geniuses and confident people), I love to create yummy food, I love to create beautiful gardens...I'm a sucker for creation.
Dieter F Uchtdorf gave a talk about happiness and creation a few years ago, in October 2008. I love it, and I've referred to it many times in my life. If you want to read it, click on this link: Happiness, Your Heritage, Dieter F Uchtdorf
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| This picture was taken from my driveway in fall of 2014. Gorgeous, huh?! What a Creator! |
As I thought about this today, I have thought about how very logical the idea of creativity as therapy is. I'm God's daughter, right? If He's the creator of all, and I'm His child, then it makes sense that I inherited both a natural desire for creation and also a natural aptitude for it. I think I've perhaps been given an extra large dose of the desire to create, and maybe not quite as much natural aptitude...I want to be able to create and do everything (I have "olympics envy" going on, as I watch gymnasts, divers, swimmers and runners and think how awesome it would be to be able to do those things as well as they do.) Realistically, I know that I'm not going to be perfect and good at everything, (have you seen my house?!) and that's OK too, but I have come to realize that having a desire to create: to do good, to make something, to improve something--that's part of my heritage as a child of God, and I've begun to embrace it. When I feel down, on those days when I wonder if the reason that Gideon was taken home was that I couldn't be a good enough mother to him, or when I feel like I don't really do much good, I take that Heavenly heritage, and I find a way to create something. When I speak of creation, I don't necessarily mean things that can be put on display or in a talent show. (Heaven knows, on down days it's hard to pull myself up and create anything, but especially anything fancy or display worthy.) Creation can be something as simple as creating a smile, a glimmer of hope, creating faith in humanity, or creating a space that's beautiful simply by tidying it up.
To double the therapeutic power, I love to simultaneously create something and help another person learn to create something. Teaching my children to cook, helping other kids learn to play the piano, sharing my feelings about a scripture in Sunday school, all those things make me feel so much better about who I am, they all help me to create, and hopefully inspire others to create too.
Creating makes me feel good, and I think that, in part, it's because it brings me closer to God, as a creator. Helping another person learn to create is also part of His work, to help all His children grow into their potential, and so that's another way to help me be more like Him. When I'm closer to Him, I'm happier, and able to find myself and find reasons to smile, even when things are hard.
I love this so much! And I love and admire you too. It seems like a harsh and difficult way for someone to gain this kind of depth and nobility, but you've got it. There are some who buckle under the weight of grief and there are others who become stronger from having hefted it as they've moved along in their everyday lives. You are the latter. I think you're wonderful.
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