This weekend I had grand plans to let the time slip away in the evenings and during nap time in the craft room, paint brush in hand, country music going. So didn't happen. Instead a sore throat ( a bad, on fire one) showed up and hasn't left yet. Painting moved aside for naps and this frustrated me at first. Then I began to remind myself how my mind and body typically works. I'll get bent out of shape because I get in too big of a hurry with life sometimes and then on down the road I'll think, well I should have just rested and stopped worrying so much. What race am I in, anyway? Certainly not one anyone else has entered me in, this is my own doing.
I did capture some pictures of shadows and light, perhaps my favorite combination on this God-given earth. For what would the light be without the shadows?
In my own life and art, I'm trying to love the shadows and light combination just as much as I do in the night sky or captured in a photo.
My shadows are fear, doubt, worry, and comparison....and this is just in the art world alone.
Specifically in the art world. I'm so new at my
Etsy shop and already the voice taunting me with questions like "Who do you think you are?" have become louder and louder. Then I look at my stacks of happy, colorful art and the light is so overbearing the darkness just can't stick around. Sometimes I feel like a hypocrite though, painting such cheerful prints. Surely everyone must think I'm that cheerful all the time. Truth is, I'm not. I get majorally overwhelmed with my love and responsibility of being a mama and yet wanting to be an artist also. I know working moms and stay-at-home moms, but not very many moms who stay at home and have a passion and desire for an art job. Most would probably question and wonder why bother with the art. Because my soul needs to. Like I feel myself breathing differently and deeper when I invite a bit of art into my days. My Creator surely had to have made me that way. I can feel a physical difference in myself when I create and when I don't.
So the truth is, I'm not Miss Perfect Pollyanna. But I've watched one too many lives chased down with darkness and I refuse to be another number. I create, I am an artist (I have yet to say those words out loud). It's who my Heavenly Father made me to be. On the days art fits into my days well, I'm an artist. On the days it doesn't, I'm still an artist. I'm a good mama for pursuing my passions, not a bad one. I will face my shadows and then invite the light into the picture-over and over until the darkness has to shrink back and hide in the corner.
When I feel the dark trying to confuse me into thinking I'm in a race and forever behind,
I'll put the to-do list down and daydream or listen to music instead.
How do you face your shadows and light?
