Married to an Artist
The Lord is so patient with us. After 8 years of marriage, I am still learning to appreciate the career of the man I married. The seeds were slowly planted. Last March, through a period of many family transitions, I was somehow attempting to read Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenia as my first choice of fiction in years, (ha, great idea, Alex, ease back into fiction with an intense Russian classic!). I tried so hard to finish that book, but after taking 4 months to get to page three hundred, (which if you know me, you know that is quite a slow drag), I allowed myself to put it down, placing it back on the shelf, (another time, another season). Yet, in those three hundred pages, something began to profoundly change my perspective. Tolstoy’s descriptions of the characters inner dialogues, of the beauty around them, of just each thing they touched, each thought they had, it was so brilliantly, deepening artistic. Over the past year, in quiet moments, I started to understand that the way Tolstoy viewed the world, was of course, the way of an artist. As this view slowly comes come into my own focus, I realize more and more how this has always been that of the view of my husband. Of course, I married an artist! Tolstoy’s slow, intricate details in the written word drew me closer to that understanding. The way there were written not in order to “just get to the point!” like my own, “Nick, what are we doing?” “I mean, what is our minute by minute productive family schedule?” They way that art only touches the soul who can remain still enough to see it, and receive it in the way the artist attempts. Be still, and know that I am God, he teaches us. Oh, how close the artist is to this truth! If you are some type of over-achiever, workaholic, “doing not being” addict, I recommend you befriend a true artist. Through them you can slowly and patiently learn a new way of living, a new way of seeing the world. And through them you may become closer to our wonderful Creator.
This is the way of the man I married. A quiet, humble man, who chooses to see beauty in the details. A man who can take a walk without a pen, without a distraction, and count that as “work.” The work of entering into creation, in order to bring that creation to life. A man who’s melancholic spirit yearns so deeply for the divine, he can easily detach from the empty vanity we are so immune to chase. A man who teaches me the art of slowing down, not only for one’s sanity, but for entering the path to experiencing the truth, beauty and goodness of creation. A man who negates my habitual-fast-paced productive-nature, which so easily falls into the trap of only experiencing love for doing, instead of just being. A man who’s artistic spirit impersonates that “being not doing,” theme God is patiently trying to teach me. A man who can find art in every aspect of life, and discretely teach us the wonder in details. A man who can turn a simple moment of film or photography through a lens into a masterful work of art. A true artist. What an unexpected privilege to be married to him. Something I never expected, and too often take for granted. I pray this year you are blessed with getting to know and appreciate the true artists in your life. We absolutely need them. Thank you God for the man I married, and all the artists you have wonderfully created!
As a great saint once said in his letter to artists, “Humanity in every age, and even today, looks to works of art to shed light upon its path and its destiny.”
May we know and appreciate their humble, often hidden lives, which will so brilliantly point to Him.
