There is something about literature/compostion/creative writing type classes that the Lord seems to love to use to speak to me. I guess when he walked the earth he used parables, so a short story isn’t a stretch.
So tonight it wasn’t so much the stories we discussed as the discussion and just my general state of mind for the last few months which is close to confusion, an increasing sense of peace and both a giving up and a renewed effort. Confusion is maybe a poor word, because in the Christian culture I live in it is associated with evil thus, God is not a God of confusion. I beg to differ only because I totally KNOW he doesn’t explain Himself, at least not to me. Half the time I just don’t get Him. I am slow to process. I think faith walk is a walk in the dark. Sometimes without bearings maybe just the still small voice that say… be open to this… And I am off in a direction I never imagined or I have fought, just because I didn’t believe it was the direction God was leading me in… just a distraction.
Tonight he said rest… awhile. Maybe I will catch up on all the stuff in my head that I am trying to figure out… or maybe I will rest from figuring it out… because I can’t.
I won’t go into the story that one of my classmates wrote, but I will share part of my review of it. I was about the death of a child from a fatal inherited disease.
The care the father gave was imperfect and inadequate, because there was nothing he could do and he was such a wounded character that really when he turned to God there was a beautiful plea to God for life. There was nothing for the father to do, but he did something. His prayer was not answered. Then there was the burial which again was imperfect. It seemed to add to the father’s despair. The author left us with the father’s only solution, to drink, again an imperfect solution. The story is an expression of the knowledge that life is lived in a fallen broken world sometimes without answered prayers or answers to our whys.
Add to this how angry I was about another story I had to read which was so full of obscenities, spiritism, drug, and homosexuality. When I found out the story wasn’t finished I hit the ceiling and refused to read it again in order to review it. I did a harsh review of it.
When I got to class I realized who had written it. I had written a bad review of his last story for the same reason. There is something about this kid when you see him in person that tells me he has been dealt some very severe blows in life. I know from his countenance and stature that he is beat down and broken. I didn’t give him my review I handed his story back uncommented on. I hate what he wrote, but the Lord broke my heart for this kid. He has softened my heart towards some others too. But even more than that he showed me how guarded my heart is and how un connected I am to people. I am there, but not really connected, not like I used to. I used to invest emotionally in people. I haven’t done that. I have a few friends that I feel safe with, but everyone else I keep at a distance. I have been too wounded and sad to invest. Or maybe I had nothing to give having been devastated by the events of the last few years. As I have worked so hard to forgive and have had some measure of success by feeling the pain, I am also feeling other emotions. I am very emotional lately and trying to deal with it all, thus some of the confusion that I don’t want to call confusion… maybe just restoration.
How God brought all that out in class I don’t know, but it all fell into place as I walked through the place that God speaks and out to my car in the parking lot.
I need to let some people in my life. I have really been in isolation.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Tying up my day with some writing…
I am in a Sunday school class now and we are studying Hebrews. This is one on the first mixed media pieces I did in what is now called my Faith Series. It is entitled “Once and For All.” It represents a struggle I had in accepting not that I was saved, but that I can be forgiven. The truth is Christ died once for all and He died for me. And the blood of Jesus is applied to me.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
A Direct Quote
A woman I write devotionals for, an adjunct professor at a women’s college in North Carolina and a pastor’s wife, gave me a book to read a long while back. I have very, very strange reading habits that have been made stranger by the fact I am in school and have very little extra time to read what I want.
I have been reading the book she gave me for more than a year and finally came across why she gave me the book. She has been a dear and published some very heart wrenching devotionals and tucked most of them under the category of healing. She believes in it. In the meantime I want to write devotionals on victory, contentment, progress… anything but woundedness. But because I am obnoxiously straight forward, I haven’t written much like that.
I am dealing with what I am dealing with and it involves forgiveness as I encounter “triggers” that bring up memories that wound. I am not in control of this. I am doing the best I can. Recently the nature of the triggers has changed, also the responses. I have these very strong emotional currents that surface with these triggers. A kind word, something beautiful… really good things make me weep. There is something going on that I don’t understand, but it is powerful and healing. I feel a little wacked. But I think because I am aware of the phenomenon and I almost observe it and allow it, it doesn’t control me or even lead me to conclusions, it just is.
The passage… but I can’t explain how it relates to what I just wrote or the painting and the response to the painting I had on Saturday. I think if I tried to label this it wouldn’t do it justice and I would say, wacked.
From When Heaven Invades Earth, Bill Johnson, page 114.
About a spiritual experience he was having…
I didn’t know of anyone who would believe this was from God. I recalled Jacob and his encounter with the angel of the Lord. He limped for the rest of his life. And then there was Mary, the mother of Jesus. She had an experience with God not even her fiancee believed, although a visit from an angel helped to change his mind. As a result she bore the Christ child… and then bore a stigma for the remainder of her days as the mother of an illegitimate child. It was beginning to become clear; the favor of God sometimes looks different from the perspective of earth than from heaven. My request for more of God carried a price.
Tears began to soak my pillowcase as I remembered the prayers of the previous months and contrasted them with the scenes that just passed through my mind. At the forefront was the realization that God wanted to make an exchange – his increased presence for my dignity. It’s difficult to explain how you know the purpose of such an encounter. All I can say is you just know. You know His purpose so clearly that every other reality fades into the shadows as God puts His finger in the one thing that matters to Him.
I have been reading the book she gave me for more than a year and finally came across why she gave me the book. She has been a dear and published some very heart wrenching devotionals and tucked most of them under the category of healing. She believes in it. In the meantime I want to write devotionals on victory, contentment, progress… anything but woundedness. But because I am obnoxiously straight forward, I haven’t written much like that.
I am dealing with what I am dealing with and it involves forgiveness as I encounter “triggers” that bring up memories that wound. I am not in control of this. I am doing the best I can. Recently the nature of the triggers has changed, also the responses. I have these very strong emotional currents that surface with these triggers. A kind word, something beautiful… really good things make me weep. There is something going on that I don’t understand, but it is powerful and healing. I feel a little wacked. But I think because I am aware of the phenomenon and I almost observe it and allow it, it doesn’t control me or even lead me to conclusions, it just is.
The passage… but I can’t explain how it relates to what I just wrote or the painting and the response to the painting I had on Saturday. I think if I tried to label this it wouldn’t do it justice and I would say, wacked.
From When Heaven Invades Earth, Bill Johnson, page 114.
About a spiritual experience he was having…
I didn’t know of anyone who would believe this was from God. I recalled Jacob and his encounter with the angel of the Lord. He limped for the rest of his life. And then there was Mary, the mother of Jesus. She had an experience with God not even her fiancee believed, although a visit from an angel helped to change his mind. As a result she bore the Christ child… and then bore a stigma for the remainder of her days as the mother of an illegitimate child. It was beginning to become clear; the favor of God sometimes looks different from the perspective of earth than from heaven. My request for more of God carried a price.
Tears began to soak my pillowcase as I remembered the prayers of the previous months and contrasted them with the scenes that just passed through my mind. At the forefront was the realization that God wanted to make an exchange – his increased presence for my dignity. It’s difficult to explain how you know the purpose of such an encounter. All I can say is you just know. You know His purpose so clearly that every other reality fades into the shadows as God puts His finger in the one thing that matters to Him.
Friday, March 27, 2009
That would be me.
Getting ready to watch a film, the Girl with a Pearl Earring. I came home from work and after I helped Scott get ready for Dnow in Oklahoma and SNOW, I took a nap. I woke up at 9:30 and thought it was morning. I hate that feeling like who am I and what am I doing here?
Just a fun story tonight. We have so many elderly people come in because it is Richardson and the neighborhoods haven’t turn over quite yet. There is a lady I love who sells Avon. She is a pastor’s wife who is about 75. Every other week she comes into the shop to fax her order in. This week she tells me that since I have seen her last she has fallen into the Rio Grande.
See I like that, a woman after my own heart I tell her. She went rafting with the Senior Center on a trip to Big Bend. The raft hit a rock and she bounced out of the raft into the river. She told me after her rescue her guide said, “I want you to know you went over with a smile!”
That would be me.
Then another lady came in who is more my age. We were talking and I found out her daughter was in the TVAA High School art show at UTD and won an award. That is just exciting to hear a parent talk about the effect the show had on her daughter. She home schools the daughter, but has private art lessons for her because art recently became an emerging interest. The show helped solidify her decision to attend Austin College in art. I told the mom to have her daughter attend the opening next week of Art of the Everyday because one of the artists in the show is a professor there.
I love all these connections.
Art of the Everyday Art Exhibition Opening Reception
Apr 3(6:30 - 9 p.m.)
Location: Visual Arts Gallery
Part II: March 27 - May 2, 2009The University of Texas at Dallasartist reception: April 3, Friday, 6:30 - 9:00 pm
How very weird... that film is my story.
Just a fun story tonight. We have so many elderly people come in because it is Richardson and the neighborhoods haven’t turn over quite yet. There is a lady I love who sells Avon. She is a pastor’s wife who is about 75. Every other week she comes into the shop to fax her order in. This week she tells me that since I have seen her last she has fallen into the Rio Grande.
See I like that, a woman after my own heart I tell her. She went rafting with the Senior Center on a trip to Big Bend. The raft hit a rock and she bounced out of the raft into the river. She told me after her rescue her guide said, “I want you to know you went over with a smile!”
That would be me.
Then another lady came in who is more my age. We were talking and I found out her daughter was in the TVAA High School art show at UTD and won an award. That is just exciting to hear a parent talk about the effect the show had on her daughter. She home schools the daughter, but has private art lessons for her because art recently became an emerging interest. The show helped solidify her decision to attend Austin College in art. I told the mom to have her daughter attend the opening next week of Art of the Everyday because one of the artists in the show is a professor there.
I love all these connections.
Art of the Everyday Art Exhibition Opening Reception
Apr 3(6:30 - 9 p.m.)
Location: Visual Arts Gallery
Part II: March 27 - May 2, 2009The University of Texas at Dallasartist reception: April 3, Friday, 6:30 - 9:00 pm
How very weird... that film is my story.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
haiku
fatigue
at the edge
fog makes the city strange
eyes closed
piecing together
what was said
jeweled leaves
beaded
with rain
a note
in his hand
tattered at the edges
at the edge
fog makes the city strange
eyes closed
piecing together
what was said
jeweled leaves
beaded
with rain
a note
in his hand
tattered at the edges
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Art
If I were going to post today, it would look like a grocery list because I am so tired. But I actually have a lot of interesting thoughts in my head that might actually connect if I could get 7 hours of sleep.
We learned about installation tonight in class. It is very much like graphic design.
Also just for fun when the man from the big press came to pick up the brochure files my boss and I decided to tell him we wanted the printing done Thurday and be just like our customers. It felt so good to be that obnoxious.
We are totally over worked this week, but it is good. We had six pretty bad months, but things are better, as far as work flow. I am getting to do some neat stuff. This week I got some print pieces for my portfolio.
I didn't remember to buy a new umbrella. So I use my broken one tonight. LOL.
I feel like I need to place a photo here. I will do this random things, let's see what I can find.
This is a paper folding I made with Shannon in mind. "beauty for ashes, a garment of praise for my heaviness." She used to pray this scripture for me.
Isaiah 61:3
and provide for those who grieve in Zion—
to bestow on them a crown of beauty
instead of ashes,
the oil of gladness
instead of mourning,
and a garment of praise
instead of a spirit of despair.
They will be called oaks of righteousness,
a planting of the LORD
for the display of his splendor.
haiku for a rainy day
wisteria over
the top of the wall
fragrant
sparrows
pattern the sky
with flight
storm clouds
tip
the lone oak
wind
with
my coffee
the top of the wall
fragrant
sparrows
pattern the sky
with flight
storm clouds
tip
the lone oak
wind
with
my coffee
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