Greetings!
My family is in the lineage of Artists. We may not all look like Artists nor have professions that appear to be in the field of Artists but we are Artists nonetheless. I learned of this many years ago and it took me awhile to see how I fit in. I’d always deeply admired the Artists in my family and appreciated their gifts. I think it can be difficult to perceive, accept and appreciate one’s own gifts compared to the gifts of others.
Much of my childhood was spent dabbling in the arts. I was a Jill-of-all-arts so to speak. I took ballet classes and piano lessons. In school, I was in orchestra and choir. This continued throughout my teenage years as I tried guitar and listened to music all the time. I was in plays and musicals, both behind the scenes and on stage. I took every art class I could get my hands on all through both junior and high school. I loved books and read constantly.
However, a funny happened in junior high and high school. I discovered writing. I’m sure there was writing before then but this began in a creative writing class with an assignment to describe something. I wrote a few pages describing a candle burning down. I. had. so. much. fun. I got an A- on the paper and I have this paper still to this day. Despite this, it never occurred to me to pursue any sort of career in writing.
I went on in high school to collect poetry that I liked and filled journals with it. At the time, Seventeen magazine was very popular with teenage girls and I was no exception. They had a regular page of poetry and writings from reader submissions. I think this is where I got the idea to try my hand at poetry because I wanted to submit a poem. So this then led to writing poems. Writing poetry for me was easy. I wrote a poem about each of my best friends at the time. I wrote romantic poems about my love interests. I wrote poems of teenage angst. Whenever I got an idea for a poem, I just sat down and wrote it. I even remember waking up in the middle of the night one time with a full-blown poem running through my mind. Of course, my teenage poems were not Maya Angelou quality but decent enough. What I didn’t realize at the time was writing was a gift of mine. Unlike all the other artistic endeavors I had undertaken up until then, I was actually good at this one. Not necessarily writing poetry but hearing and writing what I hear. It would be many, many years before I discovered that the words in my mind were words from Spirit. However, I lost interest in writing after high school.
My point in all of this is two-fold. First, I loved so many things, many but not all in the arts, that I had difficulty finding my niche. In college, I changed my major five times trying to settle on something that mattered to me, that I was good at, that I was interested in and that would translate into a practical career. When I got out of college with a practical degree, I never used it. College is sometimes wasted on the young. I think it takes real world experience and just some life under your belt to fully realize your interests, your potential and your gifts. Five years out of college, I began to realize what I wish I had gotten a degree in. The rush to go straight to college out of high school doesn’t work for everyone. Some know that they know that they know and some do not.
But second and maybe more importantly, I arrived at the point many, many, many years down the road realizing that it didn’t really matter that I got the “wrong” degree, that I lost my way, that I forgot my “Artist” lineage, that I left behind all of my childhood joys, what I loved and what I was good at. Somehow, despite all of that, Spirit and the Universe managed to bring me here, exactly where I am meant to be. Exactly where I could have envisioned myself to be when I was a teenager. I am here writing to you. I am here talking to Spirit. I am here ministering as I always wanted to do.
So never fear. You will get where you are going even if you make a few mistakes along the way. What matters the most is that you keep going. That you do not lose heart in yourself, your life, your path, your purpose, your desires and moving forward.
Love in the Light of God, Dawn