Friday, January 15, 2010

Heart's Desire

Art, wonderful art, you call to me in the morning and sing your song to me in the evening. I have heard your calling all my life yet pushed you aside for the sake of money and security. My heart craved for you in the desert of my life. My insecurities strangled your quest for my heart.

Yet you called after me day after day, year after year and decade after decade. This gift God planted in my heart burned with a lifetime desire. I was taught that art would never provide for me or my family. I was told to leave the art to someone else, so I did.

Oh my beautiful art you squeezed through the cracks of my life for 40 years, showing your fantastical light in the dark corners of my heart. You made promises to me and whispered your desire to occupy my life.

Still, like a soldier, I carried on in a world of green wool and concrete. Hate and discontent engulfed my hours of work but in my home art began to seep through the walls and swoop down from the ceiling. Until that day, that wonderful when heaven was disguised as hell and God closed the door that separated me from my entire life. While I was alone in that empty room He took my heart in his hands and then He took my hands into His heart.

God changed my hands from a fighting, struggling, and strong woman into the hands of a servant, humbled and broken. It was in that weakness that I was given the gift I yearned for all my life. God created me to be an artist and now He could bless me with purpose. I began to walk in the shoes created for me when I was a child who saw the dew on a flower and the sparkle of water on a blade of grass. I again see who I am.

I entered my life again and this time I brought with me a sort of "Pandora's Box" filled with the beauty in this world called art. It's a world filled with love and hope and destiny. It is saturated with acceptance and freedom. I walked into my home and placed the box in my kitchen. When I opened the box my beautiful children embraced everything in it as though it was a box of dress-up clothes. They pulled the art out and wrapped themselves in it and they threw it around like confetti and glitter and each one of them painted their bedroom walls with it. My heart soared because I knew they were in love and I knew they would never have to suffocate art from their lives. My passion has taken roots in my home and my life and it grows like ivy through my motherhood, "daughterhood", sisterhood, and friendships.

Art my wonderful art, you call to me in the morning and sing your song to me in the evening.