The Scent of water

I was meditating on Ephesians 2:10 a couple of mornings ago.

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

I was pondering that fact that we are God's workmanship and what that means. Just as an artist creates a piece of art and it is an expression of His heart, so God created each of us as an expression of His heart. He created us as His handiwork exactly how he intended. He wove us together in the womb and placed us in the exact family and environment that would bring about exactly what He intends for each of us. He has sent, sends, and is sending that which we need when we need it to lead us to where He wants us to go. The path is just as important as the destination.

He created me as an artist from the beginning. He also allowed the intense creativity and artistic nature in me to be crushed. So destroyed was the artist in me that I would never have dreamed saying I was creative 10 years ago, much less call myself an artist. It was so crushed anyone looking would have called it dead, but slowly over the last 5 to 7 years God has been busy resurrecting that which seemed impossibly desolate and demolished.

I have had the desire to draw for my whole life. I don't mean wow it would be pretty cool to be able to draw. I mean a passionate burning desire to be able to visually express what I see in my head. It has been such a unfulfilled, yet desperate desire in my heart. I have struggled and struggled trying to learn to draw. Then when the time was right...

I found a class online. Actually, several from a web site called willowing.org.
I am actually learning how to draw. I have drawn faces. I have NEVER been able to draw faces. They might not look like a particular person, yet, but I can draw a face that looks like a face. I have had enough success that I am thinking about a drawing class in school. This has been such a huge desire and I really thought it was impossible. If you have an inkling toward wanting to paint and draw, but find it a bit challenging go check out Tam at Willowing.

It has been such a journey. There has been so much struggle and frustration and so many tears. There has been doubt and spiritual war over this art thing. I have such harsh critics and an old mean operating system that runs in the background of my mind all the time.

Every part of this journey has been so important. It was important for the artist to be crushed. He created the artist and He allowed the destruction of the artist. When the time was right He resurrected the artist. Every part of this journey has been intentional, hand written by my creator; it was important for what He has for me to do that the artist be crushed seemingly beyond repair. As He resurrects it, and there is no doubt He is resurrecting her, the beauty of the struggle brings Him so much more glory than if I had just been born an artist and walked in it my whole life. The end is far greater than the beginning. What He has resurrected out of the ashes of devastation is so much more beautiful and so much grander. I have no doubt that He has great plans for the resurrected artist. I just need to continue to seek Him and grow. I need to be diligent to learn and allow myself to explore. I have to learn not focus on the end result of the art, but delight and rejoice in the creative process. He is setting me freer and freer every day and giving me more and more confidence to create art.

He has sent me so many resources and so much inspiration. He is allowing me to take so many different expressions of creativity and combine them into even more creative types of art. I am drawing, painting, collaging, Art Journaling, quilting, doing fabric and texture art. There are so many beautiful expression that He has brought into my life to combine and work with.

I am an artist. I am no longer afraid to call myself an artist. I am no longer to intimidated to make art. The enemy does not like it and the critic in my head tries to hold me back, but I have gotten free enough to silence the critic most of the time. I recognize the voice is not the voice of my Father and turn to my Father to hear what He has to say. His affirming voice is becoming louder than the critic and the enemy. Art is such a huge part of my life now and I am well aware of the tremendous healing power it has. I have a sneaking suspicion the reason He allowed so much brokenness and struggle was so I could take that struggle, make something beautiful out of it and use it as rocket fuel to power the work He wants me to do bringing healing and art to other broken people.

I read a beautiful book on suffering called The Scent of Water and the author pointed out a scripture I have never seen before, but it speaks so loudly to me especially in the area of art.

Job 14:7-9 "For there is hope for a tree, if it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its tender shoots will not cease. Though its root may grow old in the earth, and its stump may die in the ground, yet at the scent of water it will bud and bring forth branches like a plant."

That is such a beautiful picture of what I just wrote about. Though the tree was cut down and seemed dead beyond resurrection, at the scent of His water, the shoot began to grow. That is how it has been over the last 7 years. Sometimes the art development seriously seemed to be standing still. I doubted the resurrection of the artist was possible at times. I told myself this whole thing was ridiculous at times. But the shoots have been steady growing sometimes slower sometimes faster. Now as I look at the stump it is no longer a stump. It is tree. It has a trunk and branches and leaves. It can weather the storms that enemy sends and the criticism that comes. I can even handle making art that I don't like. It doesn't send me into a fit of self doubt and fear. I can look at it and say, "Well that experiment didn't go well. Guess I will try it another way." I used to be paralyzed by fear of failing or making something ugly. I would get stuck and not even try because I didn't want to "waste supplies". Now I just play and create. I can always get more supplies. Usually even if I don't like what I have created I can change directions and end up with something different that I do like.

The smell of His water woke me up and the constant shower of His grace has grown the dead stump into a pretty stout tree which is getting stronger by the day. Hopefully, I can be shade to other broken people so they can have a safe place to smell His water and be resurrected into trees as well.

Five Minute Friday: Open

What an amazing and timely prompt for me.

As I go into this new year pondering what the Lord has for me this is the feeling I have. I am beginning this new year with a 17 day trip to Ethiopia to serve. I am open to whatever God wants to do and excited for Him to work in me and through me. I don't know what to expect, but I am open. I have been open by saying yes to join in the adventure. I have said yes to leaving me comfort, my rhythm, my safety and diving into something new and big and scary.

I also feel like the last few months have been challenging to me. I have been a little off and a little different. Maybe it's been a little dark even. Now I realize I have been in a cacoon. I have been preparing for the next phase of my journey. I have felt the cocoon opening the last few weeks. I feel like i am emerging as a butterfly. There are so many amazing things stirring in me. I am taking some art classes. I am starting to dance one again. I am beginning to take all the really great techniques that i have been learning and merge them into new and interesting expressions of beauty and goodness. I feel filled with excitement, anticipation, joy, vision, and direction.

My wings are spreading. I am open to the new the God wants to do. I am open to where He wants to lead me, challenge me, and ask me to go. I see so much light as the cocoon is breaking open and the arts begin once again to flow out of me like a river.

Lord, I want to be open to all that you are and all that you want to do. Free me from fear and the desire for safety. Help me to say yes, live dangerously and wonder at how small I would make my life compared to how big a life you have in mind for me.


At the top is some of the Art coming out of the cocoon.

Five Minute Friday: Color

This will be my first time to participate in this exercise. I have been following, but never get around to doing it.

So Here Goes.

Color is beautiful. I love bright colors. I love combinations so complementary colors. For so many years I wore only black with maybe a splash of red. I spent years working in the makeup and hair industry and found that to be a perfect excuse to wear only black. I tended to toward a more gothic type style and so black and red worked for me. That also bled into my art. It was very dark, black, red and gray color schemes.

What color represents in my life now is the healing of God in my heart. I have begun to phase the blacks out and slowly add color. My wardrobe is changing slowly. What is really changing is my art. My art has become so lively, bright. So outside of the box. I am becoming so much more adventurous. The timidity of being scared of the artist in me and scared of failing has been so stripped away and healed. My art is life and color and a stunning example of God's power to heal and change and restore.

Stop!!

That wasn't very long. and it also wasn't very hard. Maybe if I would commit to this every Friday I could find more time to use the gift of writing God has given me.

My Lenten Journey

This year is the first year I have observed Lent. I have not really been in a church that observed it, nor have I even been taught anything about it. This year our church began following the Liturgical Calendar and observing the rhythms and days of the calendar. I have been so amazed at the focus and direction it has given my walk to think in terms of the seasons of remembrance in our faith as a opposed to just passing the days and months of the year. When we started this journey, our pastor, Mark taught a class on the Liturgical calendar, the meaning of the days, and what is significant about walking this calendar. I loved the idea of walking through the seasons of the life of Christ and how that can and will shape us into His image if we will allow. I love the idea that each year we can revisit remembering and re-walk the path, and as we revisit each year we will be changed and have a deeper understanding of who He is and how He walked. We will, in turn, have a deeper understanding of who we are in Him and be daily formed by Him into His likeness. I have been so excited to walk this path and have been so amazed at what He is doing in me as I seek to be in tune with the seasons and what He wants to teach me in all of them. The other part of this new journey I really enjoy is reading each day from the Book of Common Prayer. It really amazes me to think on the idea that brothers and sisters all over the world are reading the same verses and listening to what our Father has to say about them each day. There is something big, and grand and beautiful to me about the church of Christ unified in readings that cross ethnic, denominational, economic, and national boundaries. I have been so blessed to be able to discuss with my husband and other members in our church what we are reading and what He is teaching each of us as we read. It has been such a surprise how much I have enjoyed implementing these two practices into my life.

So onto Lent. As we were following the Church calendar and preparing , I had prayed for weeks about what the Lord wanted Lent to look like in my life this year. Observing Lent was a new idea and our pastor was so good to post links to sites we could read and research to understand what this journey of Lent is about and how people historically have observed it and people who are accustomed to observing Lent are doing so now. I began to seek the Lord and ask Him what He wanted me to do or give up. What I felt impressed to do was surprising and seemed pretty unorthodox. But, as I continued to press and seek Him, I continued to feel the same impression. What I felt I was to do was really press into finding the creative artist He created me to be. I felt Him tell me to bath it in prayer and be faithful to take time each day to express creativity or write something. I felt like He said we were going to walk through the darkness and shadows the have buried "the artist" in me, and deal with that fear, the insecurity, the doubt, the paralysis that sometimes keeps me from even feeling like I can try. I began to work through a book by Janice Elsheimer called The Creative Call. I am also taking an online creative Indie business class. I felt like He told me if I would work on these and seek Him everyday, we would walk through the shadows and doubt resulting in Him resurrecting "the artist" at the end of the journey on Easter. So I have undertaken His call to really push into who He made me to be and all that stands in the way of that. There have been times when I just felt like giving up in the last week. I hear the old familiar voice in my head telling me that "this is stupid", "who am I to think I am an artist", "I am not really an artist". Then I would hear Him whisper to me "don't give up, press in, how are you going to inspire the people I want you to inspire if you give up and don't find your freedom?" So I press on. I am supposed to write every day for my assignments in The Creative Call and I have failed many days to make time to do that, but I can and will keep pressing and seek to do better. I spent hours yesterday writing in my journal as I sat on the back porch in the sun. It was amazing. It was so amazing that it may be easier for me to consistently make and guard that space to write. I read His word and just wrote my heart out. It was liberating and beautiful. I also made a piece of art that He inspired me to make; I trusted Him and worked on it and finished it yesterday. And, I actually like it. The picture above is what I created yesterday. It was such a great day. I feel so free and inspired and motivated to keep pressing on. I see the progress and growth He is doing in me and I am so excited to keep going and see who I am in a few weeks after completing my commitment to undertake this journey and be disciplined about making space to do what I actually have such a deep desire to do anyway.

So this morning as I sat quietly before the Father resting and waiting to hear what He wanted to say to me, He showed me a beautiful and heartbreaking picture. I began to weep. He showed me that I buried my true self; the beautiful artist, the truest part of who I am. I buried her a long, long time ago b/c I wanted her to be safe. I put her away in a box buried in corner in the basement of my soul. She is the most beautiful, purest part of me. She has been buried and covered over with so many layers so that none of the pain, abuse and tragedy could get to her. I needed to protect her b/c it was not safe for her when I was growing up. Now, though, it is her hour; it is time for the me He intended when he thought me up to come forth. My Father is digging her up out of the dirt and introducing me to the beautiful artist that I have kept safely tucked away for so many years.

I am so glad that my Father challenged me to take this journey for Lent and that He gave me the courage to accept the challenge. What a beautiful dimension and sense of adventure I feel as I learn to let the Creator teach me to develop and cultivate the creator He has created, called and equipped me to be.