Creating in Faith - Loss and purpose

At some point in your life you will experience loss.

 

I have been finding in my 40’s that there is an increase in people I know who have either passed or have illnesses with very serious prognosis.  You never imaging yourself to be in that position, can’t prepare for it and when it comes it leaves a hole that seems impossible to fill.   

Almost 20 years after my father passed I still have dreams about him in totally new situations. In the beginning the dreams would be of him during his illness.  As the dreams progressed he would get stronger until one dream he was lifting a wardrobe and I asked him if he could be more careful because of the illness, he laughed and told me he was fine.  In my most recent dream he came to my mum’s home and had a friend with him.  He was dressed really smart and looked like the picture I have of him in his younger days.  

 On waking I realised the friend he had with him was my mum when she was a young woman. 

The loss of a loved one takes time to come to terms with, the intense pain softens, you carry on, but you never forget.  I still think about my first son who passed at 3 days old, he would have been 23 now and I often wonder what he would have been doing now, thinking about all that he could have achieved with his life.  

While we can’t bring back those we have lost we can celebrate their lives, we rejoice at the lives they touched the impact they had on this world and we look to our own lives and hope that we too can make an impact on the lives of others and be the blessing we were called to be.   

I imagined as I got older I would be sharing more times of laughter with tales of grandchildren and aching joints, alongside the creative adventures with my good friend Barbara who I had known since I was 16 and who passed in 2011 and is so dearly missed.  

 From time to time I dwell on the shared experiences, and conversations we had about our journey as artists, the love she gave to her family and the love she shared with others.

 me and Barbara in our early 20's

Ecclesiastes tells us that there is a time for everything and everything in its season: 

There is a time for everything,

and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot, 

a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,

a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance,
a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,
a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,
a time to search and a time to give up,
a time to keep and a time to throw away,
a time to tear and a time to mend,
a time to be silent and a time to speak,
a time to love and a time to hate,
a time for war and a time for peace.

As we draw close to the end of the year, let us make a decision to live our lives on purpose.  Take hold of 2013 and aim to make an impact on your own life and that of others.  Whilst we will continue over the years at some point to suffer loss, let us hold on to the blessings that each individual life shared with us and celebrate their memories with joy, and let us live our lives to the full and not take one more day for granted.

  He gives strength to the weary, and to him who lacks might He increases power...Isaiah 40:29

Come join the group - Creating in Faith, show us how you will be incorporating the words and scriptures and reflections in your art this week.  Step out and be a blessing and you will also be blessed!

Gratitudes - Seeds

It’s amazing where some plants grow.  I inherited my green fingers from my mum and love growing new plants and a lot of the ones I have were grown from seed.  I have also been blessed by the passing birds who often drop seeds as they fly by.

 What are you grateful for this week?

21 Secrets - Tracie Hanson

Creating backgrounds and pulling out shapes, defining what feels right and allowing the painting to tell its story has over the past year been a method I find quite freeing, and have really come to enjoy starting some of my paintings this way.

 My journal paintings depicts a group of women who are supportive of each other within a community sharing time with the younger generation...

Tracie Hanson encourages us in her Journal Quest workshop to experiment further with colours and backgrounds that compliment each other and let the painting flow, pulling out the shapes, this takes practice and perseverance but it is a delight to see the finished pieces and what they have to say. 

I used charcoal pencil to draw the shapes I could see, then started muting the background colours as I wanted to bring emphasis to the figures. The story develops and unfolds the more you look. 

This was another lovely workshop where you can take or leave some of the techniques.  I encourage you to check out her website, she has some amazing paintings that she has produced.  Blessings..

52 Weeks of Colour - Knowing your treasures

A thought for the week.....
  
Life is what you make it.  Every day we have to grab hold and treat each minute as if it were our last.  There are many who didn't get to see today and our thoughts and prayers go out to the Sandy Hook Elementary School community.  

As we look back on our lives those things that bring a smile are those shared memories that we get to experience with others, the differences that we can make in each others lives.  You have an important story to tell and should value it.  As you reflect on your week ahead treat yourself like the treasure you are... Blessings, Amanda

 **************

Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you knowhow, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.  ...Agnes de Mille

  "(Nothing can) separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:39