Different how? That's kinda hard to explain. Walking back into the school, it felt darker, more oppressive than before.
More so than high school usually felt, of course. As someone that never really enjoyed high school (loved college, though), I was used to feeling trapped there.
This was worse.
During the break, I had the opportunity to go on a winter retreat with the youth group from my church. It was only four days, right near the end of the break, but it was such an amazing, wonderful time of spiritual renewal. A real mountaintop experience.
Returning to school was such a jarring difference from the winter retreat that I was hyper-aware of the spiritual darkness of the school; it was quite disconcerting.
A big part of me was very sad to be heading into a valley so soon after the mountaintop experience.
I was reminded of this at the recent Mark Lowry concert I attended. Mark made a statement that I think has much wisdom in it - remember what you saw in the light when you are once again in the darkness.
We are all going to have dark times, but we can make it through them if we remember all those amazing things that God showed us when we were in the light.
Walking into my high school, I allowed the darkness of the world to squash what I had experienced beforehand. If I had only held tight to that previous experience, I probably would have fared much better. I'm sure my attitude would have been better.
I think the same idea can be found in our creative pursuits as well. We need to remember the times when things are going well, when the words flow freely, when the drawing is easy... so that when we hit a block, when we can't put together a single sentence or draw a straight line, we don't become disheartened. The creativity will flow again.
I'll type at you later.
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