He makes beautiful things, He makes things beautiful

Fragmented thoughts have been percolating for weeks between the packing and the re-orienting and the upheaval and the settling and the never-ending stream of The Urgent.  No time, no ability to process or think coherently or pray deeply.  Just fragments.  But here are a few of the boulders that have been forming my fragments.

1. An e-magazine I follow featured a series of women writing love letters to their bodies.  It sounded foreign to me, as I had no healthy frame of reference for this concept, and was sort of shelving it with a label such as New Age or Selfish or Vain or, well, Fleshly.  However, I started reading what women were writing.  There were stories of abuse and pain, stories of healing and redemption.  There were stories that spoke of the disconnect many women had felt between their intellect and their bodies, and how they had not seen God's good creation, given to them in Life, as a good gift.  The series culminated here.  If you read it, read it thoughtfully.  The whole idea challenged me, but I didn't delve deeply into myself to think through my story and what I ('I' being my heart/soul/mind) would say to my body.

2. I had been thinking about art, and visual art in particular.  Drawing and painting and the like are things towards which I have never gravitated as an artist because they are things in which I have no natural talent.  But as I've been mulling about making space to be creative, I've wondered what dabbling in colours would do in me.  It's preposterous to think of, really, because my drawing skills would get me kicked out of any respectable kindergarten class.

3. I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.  (Galatians 2:20 ESV)

So with these fragments in tow, I was part of a creative worship night with some dear women last week, and it was a long, deep breath of sweet air.  We gathered to encourage each other and to venture into (potentially) new territories of creativity in worshipping God with more of ourselves.  It was simultaneously safe and challenging, and I immediately gravitated towards the area prepared for painting -- it felt ridiculous and right.  I started to choose my colours, and I knew that somehow I would be drawing myself, my body, and telling my story.  My strokes were neither clear nor expert but they were mine, and the blues, greens and browns began to form a tree.

There were roots: strong, hidden roots.  There were dark patches, like the times I disapprove(d) of my skin or my curves.  There were indistinct, dusky patches coloured by years of discharing my angst, unordered and un-analyzed, while facing my body in front of the mirror.  There were shades of blue, times when I knew I was created in love but didn't glorify my Maker by taking care of the earthly vessel He gave me.  There was also beauty.  The more I kept painting, the more I kept adding shades of blues and greens and browns.  However, the painting kept growing darker (It turns out that layering lots of paint can get pretty dark.  Who knew).  I realized that, literally and figuratively, the painting needed to become brighter because it was not honest.  So I hesitantly reached for some red.  I am not a person who gravitates towards reds, ever, and I was afraid of irreversibly uglifying my canvas.  But I had nothing to lose, and in truth I knew that some of my personal brightness, some of the way I've come to see myself differently, comes from one of Orion's names for me: Cherry Tree.  Through his love through the years, I have come to know some of my own beauty that I'd never known before.  His love for me is such a key part of my story that I knew I needed to bring it into this painting (I realize that I was likely trying to do to much in this experiment, bringing too many ideas and too much meaning to the table.  I can get kind of serious like that).

So I started to add wisps of red and it really made a difference.  The colours were made more beautiful in their contrast.  But Galatians 2:20 was still ringing inside of me.  Even more hesitantly than I had reached for the red, I reached for the bag of paints labelled 'iridescent.'  I found gold and started to add streaks of gold to the trunk, cautiously but with quiet determination.  It was transformational.

When I felt I was done, I made my way over to The Chair and sat down.  A couple of women came and prayed for me (that's what The Chair was for), and Susan told me that the picture she received while praying for me was a picture of God filling me with liquid gold.  Gold was being poured into me, all the way down to my toes, and it was filling me up.  The gold was His worth: Christ was filling me with the beauty of His worth.

With wet cheeks, I invited Susan to look at my painting and told her my story, because she had no idea of what I'd been wading through for the past hour.  We laughed and marvelled at God's kindness, His loving kindness that fills us with His worth and makes beautiful things out of dust.

This blog post is a little rough around the edges, and a lot more personal than I feel capable of sharing in a public sort of way, but I needed to write it.  What I am trying, so inadequately, to say, is that God makes beautiful things and it is all grace.