perfectly imperfect

I spend hours staring at my artwork. Flipping it over and over and over. I critic it with a critical eye and study every flaw and misplaced line.  I get frustrated and throw it on the floor.

Three or four days later I pick up that piece of paper and look with fresh eyes at the lines I had scribbled on the paper.

I take a step back and I stare at it with new perspective. The mistakes have not changed, it hasn’t improved over time.

But My HEART has.

For me, everything I start to draw or sketch starts in my heart. It starts with a idea placed inside me by the Holy Spirit. A vision that I cannot see with my eyes, but can feel inside my soul.  

 

As this idea works its way to my brain, things start to take shape and I start to put my own personal human twist into the vision.

I start to sketch things out and nothing seems quite perfect or quite right. Nothing ever seems quite like I wanted it to in my mind. By the time I’m done with the first sketch things are sometimes quite out of perspective of the “idea” I had.  Thus the throwing it all on the floor and walking away.

Little do I ever understand with God is doing inside me. The healing, the growing, the deepening, the searching, the surrender, the molding, the shaping, the strengthening.  Rarely do I recognize the deep knife surgery that is happening inside my soul as my fingers fly over the surface of the paper.

When I pick up that piece of paper a few days later and study it, it is not with my eyes that I see it, but with the heart that God was changing as I worked. It is a piece of who I am. A struggle of my soul, and Sharpening of my heart. 

It is my heart that beats in time to the Holy Spirit. It is me pouring out the love the Father has given me. It’s me seeing with the eyes the of my Father. It’s seeing the flaws and knowing their part in the whole picture. It’s surrendering the messed up parts of me to be seen through the eyes that make all things beautiful.

My artwork isn’t perfect or without flaw. It’s not meant to be. It’s meant to reflect with unfinished work of the Holy Spirit in my life. If I were perfect, my art would probably be perfect too. But there are days when all I can achieve is a beautiful disaster.  That’s ok. Jesus love’s the disaster. He loves the broken pieces. He loves us, His messed up, dirt covered, bloodied kneed, tear stained, giggling, crazy little children.

Thank you Jesus, for loving the imperfect messed up me.

Watching Time. tick-tock...

Time….hours, minutes, seconds, years, months, decades, moments, eras, age, period, young, old, midlife crisis, prime, birthdays, anniversary, goal, stages, grades, paycheck, job, season, series, ….we have so many different ways to describe time.

Time fly’s by, time stands still. Do we value time?

Do we expect life to happen to us in this life of time? Or do we happen to this time in our lives?

I was sitting here thinking about life. How we don’t have a clue how long we are going to live in this world. How long or short our lives are going to be.

We often look at the death of people under a certain age and say or think something like… “they where taken before their time.” Or “they never got a chance to live out their lives.”

Maybe our perspective is way off! I mean if you can live your full calling in this world by the age of 4, why wouldn’t you not want to go start your eternity with Christ?

I’ve watched the pain of passing life and often thought about the sadness it brings into peoples worlds. I think we misunderstand death. The focus is the idea and focus of the negative and hurt of separation. 

But inside the love of Jesus there is so much beauty on the other side of death.

To be dead to self, is to be alive in Jesus.  Do be dead to this world is to be alive in the arms of Christ.

There have been times when I wonder at the reason for a miscarried child or even the older generation that struggles to hold on even when they seem to be internally gone.  Like, did you fulfill your purpose in life before you entered the world? Or what is it that you still need to do on this earth before you can go home?

Time is what we want most, but what we use worst. –William Penn.

YOU- right now, what is the meaning of time in your life? Does it mark off the hours till your done with work? Does it even impact your brain at all? Do you think about the passing days? Do you wonder if you are created for more then the thing you are doing?

Do you ever get up in the morning and think, if this is my last day on earth, what do I want to leave behind?

Do you ever think that, and then think, I will start tomorrow…kid, what part of your LAST day on this earth did you miss?

Do you think you have a choice as to what you do with this life? Or do you see yourself as stuck in what you are doing?

Do you love what you do? Or do you struggle to make sense of the everyday mundane happenings?

If You Don’t Make The Time To Work On Creating The Life You Want,

You're eventually going to be forced to spend a lot of time dealing with a life you don't want. – Kevin Ngo

I feel like there’s a lot of questions in this whole thing, but seriously I would encourage you to think about it. Don’t just let this life live around you, live a life that is alive! You can!

You where never meant to just survive. You where created to thrive!

Where does my help come from?

Psalm 121

¹ I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
    where does my help come from?
² My help comes from the Lord,
    the Maker of heaven and earth.

³ He will not let your foot slip—
    he who watches over you will not slumber;
⁴ indeed, he who watches over Israel
    will neither slumber nor sleep.

⁵ The Lord watches over you—
    the Lord is your shade at your right hand;
⁶ the sun will not harm you by day,
    nor the moon by night.

⁷ The Lord will keep you from all harm—
    he will watch over your life;
⁸ the Lord will watch over your coming and going
    both now and forevermore.

Walking through the daily questions I look around with confusion aired on my face.

My heart was questioning everything, every decision, every action, every word that came out of my mouth as well as every word that came back to my ears.

What was going on? 

Something was happening here. Something outside my realm of earthly perspective. 

Things where lining up in a strange, yet obvious course of events that I was struggling to make any sense of.

The battle was over the top and my strength was on the edge of gone.

With an anxious, exhausted breath. I gave it up. I let it all slid from my own hands to the hands that where reaching out to me. 

I felt the weight of everything lift off of me, and I felt myself starting to slid. I was sliding downward, but not in a freaky, murky bleakness. I was sliding deep into solid peace. I was sliding into a quiet peaceful rest, so full of glory. 

Strength started to return to my heart and soul. A strength so far outside of me that I knew without a doubt that it was the strength of my Lord. 

He was reaching out taking everything that was holding me back and baring down on me. He was lifting me up out of the crazy and setting me in a place of rest. 

He removed all fear and replaced confusion with confidence. He settled my mind and filled it with His plans and glory. He changed the doubt to laughter. 

He is the author of my life. No other. He has plans for my life that might not make sense in the view of this world. But His glory goes beyond this world. 

The greatest Love

Greater love has no one than this, that they laid down their life for their friend. 

These where the words bringing me into this valentines day.

The truth of love, the greatest love you can have, the only real reason love exists in this world, the picture of a man who gave up everything so that we wouldn’t have to suffer the total loss and separation from the father who loved us more then anything.

I’ve never been much of a fan of this consumer holiday. I don’t get how this world can celebrate a love they don’t even seem to understand. It all appears to be a form of buying someone’s love.

It’s a little painful to watch the world go wild with the pink and fluff of this holiday celebrating “Love”. I mean what does true love even look like?!

Let me give you a picture…

In the beginning was God. God is love.

When sin entered the world there was a wall that went up. A perfect God cannot be contaminated by sin.

This made God sad. He created us for the every purpose of love and relationship, not just with each other, but with himself.

God said that the punishment for sin was death and eternal separation from Him.

So he sent his only son. A son that was very much him down to this world to live a life much like we do only without the sin part.

He sent this child to the world with a mission. A mission to obliterate and destroy that wall of separation.

When the son was about 33 years old he gave himself up for this cause. This mission. To die the death that would bring down the wall and bring back a unity and love between God and his people.

But death could not keep Him. After 3 days dead this man came back to life. The wall had been ripped apart and still this mans story would not end in death.

Every sin in our lives was forgiven, the ones in the past and the ones in the future.

There is nothing we can do that will separate us from the love that God has for us. That love pursues us.

Day after day some of us try to build up that wall again. We try to ignore or discredit the thought that we are a forgiven people and we try to count the ways we shouldn’t be loved and why we will never make it.

When someone else does the work for you and all you have to do is step in a take the reward and the gift of accomplishment it is a hard thing to comprehend.

I think the hardest part of this is to choose to believe that anyone would ever die for us.

Part of the reason this is so hard is that there is two forces at work here. The God who already won, and the devil who is seeking any foothold or thought that he can attach himself too and drag us away from perfect love. Away from perfect forgiveness.

It’s time to stomp on the devils head and say no more, it’s time to say I want the truth. I’m taking it. It’s a gift to me, and I choose to receive it.

I CHOOSE LOVE.

Greater love has no one than this, that they lay down their life for a friend. John 15:13

That’s love. That’s real love.