Art

So yesterday I was speaking at Remuda Ranch, which is the eating disorder clinic I speak at on Sundays. Well the worship leader and I were running late because we had been trying to adapt to a new schedule. We arrived at the last chapel which is the adult chapel and were setting up. The Mental Health Techs that are in charge of getting the girls from one place to another told us that they had not been made aware of the change in time schedule and dinner was still at the same time which only gave us around 30 minutes to do a 50 minute chapel. As most of you know, cutting out time or words for me is difficult. I am never concise and I never ever finish on time whenever I speak. This is just my curse as a speech communications major and someone who feels like words have so much power that if I just say enough of them maybe someone will be healed! :) So this is what I ended up talking about instead of the talk that I had planned...


(This is paraphrased of coure because I honestly have no idea what exactly I said yesterday)

I have never been someone who has been super creative. I mean I enjoy creative things like performing and acting and I have always done those however there are a lot of creative mediums that do not come naturally to me and I have to struggle through them! When I was in high school and I got a part in one of the musicals the choir teacher actually wrote me out of several singing parts because I just couldn't sing! I blame it on my squeaky ever changing teenage voice however to this day when I sing in my car with my windows down magically those cars around me start to roll theirs up! I wonder why? ha ha ha...

One of the creative things that I am attempting at this point in my life is Painting. Not like my room or house or anything but actually painting on a canvas. I started this last summer and really started to enjoy it but I haven't done it in quite some time so a few weekends ago I went out and bought some paint and an easel and started going at it. The hardest thing for me in painting is staring at a blank canvas. I am always so paranoid that I am going to "mess it up." I know that in my own personal life I refuse to take risks because of this same reason. I don't want to be hurt or hurt anyone else and I don't want to make any more mistakes in my life so I'd rather just opt out of making any decisions that may affect that. This is the reason that I am so timid in my life and why I am everyone's best friend because I am safe. I am safe because I am scared of being anything other then constant. I so desparetly want to know what would happen in my life if I took risks with people or with situations however they freak me out so I stand still and refuse to move at all.

Once I get the paint on the canvas I start to make broad brush strokes and then start adding different colors to my piece. The problem is that once in while I will add to much of one color and I feel like it looks bad so I will try to brush it away with a different color but because I didn't wait for the paint to dry I smear it all across the painting!!! Then my mistake is seeping into all the other cooler areas of my art work and people everywhere are guaranteed to see it! I spend so much time in my life compartmentalizing things that eventually my faults and mistakes seem to seep into all of the areas of my life even the ones that I have tried to keep separate for so long. I am paranoid that everyone will see the writing on the wall and pick me out of the line up as the culprit who lies and hurts others.

The whole key I am learning in any painting, which is not an original thought but one that I got from a great book called THE ART OF LETTING GO, is to keep on going! I truly believe that the author is right in this book when he talks about no matter how many mistakes we feel we have made on the canvas we just have to keep adding layers and layers to our painting. In life we have strokes made for us or we make our own strokes that seem to do damage to the painting but as we continue on in our life and add layers and layers those mistakes seem to surface as beautiful accents to the true essence of our art!

Things in life are going to intrude on our lives and we have to keep going and keep going because hope comes in the morning. God only gives us enough strength and hope to get through today.

We need to stop looking at the future and being scared at the unkown and stop looking into the past and being disappointed at what has happened before, we need to start looking to today and the present as an opportunity to see new and exciting beauty that is coming out of our lives!

We are God's greatest pieces of art because he tells us this over and over again. Of all the most amazing things he has created, the sunrises and sunsets, the moutains and the beaches, the most beautiful and amazing thing he made was us! All of us! That is a work of art we can work towards being proud of being!