Wednesday, April 16, 2008

To Drive



See this here...isn't it lovely? Let me share a small day in the life of crazy me. Why? Because I'm feeling particularly crazy. Let's see, I should preempt this descripton by stating that it is in NO WAY an exaggeration!
4:45am I wake up an get ready for work
5:45am Leave for work
7:20am Arrive to work
3:40pm Leave work
5:30pm Arrive at my son's school to pick him up (IF traffic is nice and smooth)
6:30pm Arrive home from work

Hmmmm, let's see.... Let's do the math on this:
5:45-7:20 That's 1 hour and 35mins
3:40-5:30 That's 1 hour and 50mins
5:30-6:30 That's 1 hour

So that equals what?
4 hours and 25 mins

FOUR HOURS AND TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES

EVERY WORK DAY

THAT I SPEND IN THE CAR AND THAT'S WHEN TRAFFIC IS GOING SMOOTH AND THERE'S NO ADDITIONAL TASKS TO TAKE CARE OF (like going to the doctor, grocery shopping, or there's a wreck backing up traffic)

I'd say something's GOTTA GIVE! Wouldn't you? I'm crazy. This proves it beyond a reasonable doubt! I live in my car and I'm SICK OF IT!!! So, if you know anyone who's looking for an excellent artist. Drop me a comment! I can work from home! ;D

Sunday, April 13, 2008

More on the Miraculous way in which Christ works!

Would you believe today, in church, as our dear Pastor spoke of Christ he used the imagery of fingerpainting! He said let Christ's blood be the paint and be cleansed in his blood, to spread the paint everywhere...to get it all over your hands and be covered in it.

What is this significance of this?

I fingerpainted the blue background of the pendant I spoke of in my previous post!!!!!! I recently have been compelled to fingerpaint in my work!

Such as this painting here:


I feel the fingerpainting made this painting a profoundly more intimate act. More of me, my energy, could be released into the canvas. Painting with a brush leaves more to the mind than to the body...and the body is the bridge of the spirit to the world. I firmly believe that people love pieces of work, not for what they are techincally, but what kind of energy they absorb from viewing it.

I now see that fingerpainting is Christ's way of being able to work through me. That I am in prayer when I paint that way and I was in prayer as I painted this painting:



Which also means I was in prayer when I painted that dear blue pendant!

Thank you God, I see in what way you want me to move that will reveal your visions for the world...

It's time to get to fingerpainting!

Saturday, April 12, 2008

How Blessings Work

Blessings can come from the most unexpected places.

First of all I had the blessing of this dear pendant of mine popping up on Etsy's front page:


In the best place possible too! In the little photos here:



Why is this the best place possible? Because these little pictures click to the item and people can buy! Its gives you the most maximum chance of exposure for the longest time. See if you're in a treasury on the Front Page, you'll only have maximum exposure for 4-6 hours (depending on how long the admin keep that list on the front page). But with these little photos, you're exposed for as much as 4 weeks (depending on how often they run the bot that goes through and pulls images that meet the requirments to fill these spots.) Now you're only exposed every 16 or so screen refreshes, but nevertheless YOU'RE ON THE FRONT PAGE! And if you know anything about ETSY, THIS IS THE BEST THING POSSIBLE (besides being in a treasury on the front page or being a featured seller)

Now on with the other blessings that revolve around this pendant.

It was purchased by someone who shall remain anonomyous to be given as gift to someone else. They wanted me to send this note with the package:
"K----,
I admire you for your obedience to the Lord and hope that this small gift is an encouragement and blessing to you!"

I did as requested and this note spawned a candid conversation with the buyer. Through my interaction with the buyer and this whole experience I have learned much about myself, God, and power of connectivity. God has reasons for all the people we meet in our lives. I'm still uncovering the reasons why I've meet both the buyer and recipient of the pendant. Well I haven't officially met the owner of the pendant, but I was directed to her blog where she candidly and beautifully shared her love of the pendant and excactly why she loved the pendant.

Those blog posts have since been removed from her site to be kept for her eyes only, and I am thankful to have gotten to read them and her words shall be a treasure in my heart always.

See, she revealed to me that a prayer of mine is being answered.
I have prayed painfully for quite sometime now for God show me the way. For Christ to fill me and move me to paint visions of His immaculate will. I am here to paint His visions, to paint new visions of God for this world.
I've prayed to be a vessel of His will and amazingly enough I am being filled by Him!

This pendant touched K----'s heart in just that way. She spoke of how the tree symbolized the Cross and how the blue spoke of freedom and how the tree was with no leaves, fruitless~ ready to be filled.

Filled with Holy Spirit. I recognize now that when I paint, it is a prayer. My hands pray to God and I am filled with the Holy Spirit. Christ opens me and works through me and brings forth that which the world needs to see.

I am humbled. I love Him and pray to always be moved. That even through my utter failures and continual sin, I shall be cleansed through Christ and allowed to paint for Him again.

This dear pendant is a blessing to me, it is a blessing to the buyer, and it is a blessing to the recepient.

I pray that all my work reach out for Him and touch lives with His light and bring hope and peace to many...

I want to touch the world, for Him.

Look, here is the pendant. On the dear person who has blessed me and doesn't even know it:



I close this post in tears. Tears of joy, love, and blessings.

May you be moved in His grace and light.

Blake

Thursday, April 10, 2008

Migraines




I've mentioned this before. Migraines. I am plagued with them. And they've gotten worse as I've grown older, though thankfully, they have decreased in frequency.

Today I had the misfortune of awaking to a migraine. I went to bed with a headache and figured I would sleep it off. Well, that wasn't the case.

I woke up at 4:30am to a pain above my right eyebrow that felt like someone was taking an axe to my head. This is no exaggeration. I got up and fixed a tiny bowl of cereal thinking I would eat this little cereal, take some ibuprofern, and in 20 minutes or so be pain free.

Well, just the chewing action of the cereal brought on the nausea. Within the hour I found myself huddled around the toilet awating the grand painful finale as what usually happens when my migraines reach Catagory 5 status.

Yep I use the hurricane scale to define the intensity of these things. I think that helps non-migraine suffers be able to relate.

Other migraine suffers can tell ya, something about the vomiting eases the pain and makes the headache begin to fade. It is so strange.


Unfortunately, that was not the case for me today. The headache did not subside after I vomited and I found myself yet again at ye old flushie puking my brains out.
This migraine lasted until about 4:30 this afternoon. And the only reason I was able to calm it down then was because I was able to eat something and take some ibuproferen before it flared back up to vomiting status.

Days like to today are soooooo long. They take forever. It's interesting how time slows down when one is in pain.

I must mark this migraine. It is offically the worst one I've ever had simply because of its duration. I wouldn't necessarily say it was the most painful one, but the length of it was a nightmare.

So here I am, about to retire to bed praying that when I awake in the morn, it will not be to this same wretched headache!

Pray for me!

Wednesday, April 9, 2008

God



Yes, I believe in God, I believe in Christ. I am a sinner and am terribly imperfect and strive painfully everyday to be perfect~to be Christ-like. These facts I've never shared openly to world. See, I've observed that it's primarily unacceptable to be a believer...it's a "turn-off" to folks. They don't want to hear it, they don't want to know what you have to say about it. They just want to be left alone and unpressured.

I get it, that's why I've held this to myself for sooooo many years.

I can't any more. God is speaking to me, Christ is speaking to me in such a way that I can't hold it in.

I have questioned whether I believe many times. I have tried to dismiss Him and walk on my own and intentionally have choosen wrong choices as I strayed. I have fought Him in soooo many ways. Intellect against Faith. Whew what a wretched battle. I am so thankful He forgives.

But I've always returned to the Father after I ask myself deep down in the core of my being if I believe. And always, without hesitation, a soft loving "Yes" resonates back up.

"Yes, I believe. I feel it, I know it, I am it. I am Yes."

God/Christ is the only Truth that I can feel straight to the core of my being. Whenever I ask myself any other questions of Truth, I find that they are relative. The are left up to more information, or a different interpretation...all my ideas that I value as truth are constantly questioned by everthing I learn anew.


Just like the sun, my truths are molten gases~shifting and transforming as my mind heats up and generates new ideas and makes links of new truths to past truths and discards that which are no longer truths~

But not with Christ. Not with God. When you take all those molten, fluid layers of ideas and relative truths away from me

He is the one core truth in me. The stone. The center and foundation.

How amazingly comforting.

To have a center and be certain of it. Thank you God.