Pain & Creativity

I have been thinking lately about how pain and creativity are interlocked in a couple of different respects. First, that pain from the past can be brought to light, soothed, and healed through experiencing and making art in its many forms. Sometimes the only thing I land on that actually helps me progress in working through pain is art. There have been countless times that I have unexpectedly found myself a step further in the journey toward healing from something in my past after watching a movie, listening to someone's story, reading a sentence, or hearing a song. On many instances I have asked God to heal wounds in my soul and have been surprised by His direction to write words or to form songs, and have been even more surprised at how He answers my prayer for healing through this process of creating. Lately He has been pressing me to write a song about one of the hardest days of my life. I am scared to touch it, and haven't started yet. But I'm also anticipating that He has something in store for me.
Another facet of this relationship between pain and creativity that I've been pondering is that painful experiences can lead to breakthroughs in creativity. This came up in a humorous way for me recently. I woke up in the middle of the night with horrible curse-of-the-woman cramps, the severity of which I have only experienced a few times in my life. I was one sick puppy. Aaron woke up and lovingly, sacrificially took care of me until I felt okay again. (What a champ.) Here is where the fun happens: In the whole process of trying to slay the evil cramp monster, I took some extra-strength Excedrin, which contains a l-o-t of caffeine, at least for me. So, by the time I felt well enough to fall back asleep, around 5 am, I really couldn't fall asleep. My brain was like a kid on Pixi Stix. I was laying there ecstatically (but silently) thanking God for my wonderful husband, and suddenly the rest of a song that I had been writing about Aaron and had been stumped on for almost two weeks started coming to me really fast. I found my voice recorder laying around in the early morning light and very quietly made a horrible recording, my body scrunched up to the refrigerator, which was the farthest point in our apartment from slumbering Aaron. Then another song came to me, so I laid that one down too (also horribly). By that point I was just too happy and excited to sleep, so I made myself read until 7 am or so, and then returned to bed, laughing about how weird the night was, and thanking God for giving me some creativity out of the pain I'd dealt with. It's weird to think about how the song wouldn't have ended up the way it did if I hadn't woken up with those stupid cramps.
To sum up my blabbering: pain sucks, but pain doesn't have to be the end of the story. Our God makes beauty out of ashes and works all things together for good. It's fascinating to me that He calls us to become like Him in this way. I wish I had some C.S. Lewis quote about how God is the bombest artist ever or something, but I don't, so I'll have to end it here.