Long work.

Seems like I'm trending to blog about once or twice a month these days. That's pretty bad... But I'm here now - so... let's do this!

So my brother Joel has this friend Ben who also happens to a semi-famous musician. I may or may not follow Ben on Twitter, and today he tweeted about a blog post that his wife, Hillary, wrote. It piqued my interest so I read it and wow, it was great!

Hillary is a gardener (among other things...), and she basically compared gardening to life. The title of her post was One Thing We Often Forget About Creating a Masterpiece. It was all about how wonderful things (like gardening...) take time. In a world of shortcuts and instant gratification, many good things you have to wait for and persevere through. "I'm afraid we'll lose our appetites for things that can only be made by perseverance and hope and imagination applied over a long period," she said. This really struck a chord with me because I can struggle to want it all right now (I'm sure I'm the only one that struggles with this...) To sum it up, she said:

Growing things that are beautiful and healthy is long work. 

I'd recommend reading the whole post (because she said things way more eloquently than I ever could) but this really challenged me today, in the best way possible. It reminded me that some of the best things, the most beautiful and healthy, are worth the wait.

Once: The Musical.

Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts.

One of my favorite movies in college was the movie Once. To be honest, the story is pretty slow but the music is great so it ends up being pretty fun to watch! Five years ago they made the movie into a Broadway musical and since then I've wanted to see it. A couple weeks ago the musical came to Kansas City at the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts and I went to go see it with my boyfriend Josh and some friends of ours...

...and it was incredible! We were in the second row and it was amazing to be that close. The production itself was pretty simple - the same set the whole time and not a lot of action. But the music... it was amazing. One of the good and bad things about sitting so close is that you were super close to the actors/musicians. There were quite a few times I caught myself staring mesmerized, enchanted by the music and then all of a sudden make eye contact with one of the actors. Awkward. :)

Overall, it was one of those evenings that just made me happy. It tapped into the creative, musical, relational, artistic, etc.... parts of my heart. It was just a good night.

The actors played music on the stage before the show and since the set was a pub, the 

audience could come on stage and get a drink while they were playing. Unique, for sure. 

Josh and I and our friends Carrie and Jason - don't we look famous? No, not really?

He's one of my favorites.