A Faith Walk

"Are not five sparrows sold for two pennies? Yet not one of them is forgotten by God. Indeed, the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Don't be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows."

As mentioned in my last post - I am moving back into the studio full time after being out in the work force for over a year and a half. What an exciting and scary time this will be for me and for my business, Other Peoples Flowers.

The exciting part should be obvious - being in the studio doing what I love full time! After being away from this for so long I am looking forward to the opportunity with an entirely new appreciation for what a blessing it is.

But the flip side is the fear of the unknown. This move is not just a career change, it is a total walk of faith. I really do feel God leading me, but He is my sole source of security to do this. There is no back-up savings or other source of income to make up for what I will be losing from my full time job. I simply hear Him prompting me to take this step of faith and He will meet me in the process. Maybe this will be it, I will be able to bring in the necessary income through my art business, but maybe it will be another avenue that God has yet to show me. I have an idea of what the process will look like, but God has the big picture. So I have taken step one. I put my notice in and Friday will be my last day on the job. I will do my best to keep my eyes on Him and trust He is preparing the way. Stay tuned....

"Righteousness goes before him and prepares the way for his steps."

Pregnant! ~ Artsmiths One Word Challenge

This month the Artsmiths group challenged its members to create a piece of art based on one word to describe ourselves. Wow! Who would have thought this would have been such a. . . challenge?

This post is my entry. Be sure to head over to the Artsmiths blog to read the rest. And after that, dear reader, I present to you the same challenge. Create a piece of art using one word to describe yourself. Post it to your blog and come back here and leave me a comment and a link. I would love to get to know you more!



Before you get any ideas, just let me clarify, I am not with child.

But I am pregnant.

Pregnant with ideas, and life, and desire, and hope, and possibilities!

There were many words I thought of to describe myself for this art challenge. Serious words, funny words, words that describe my character, my faith, or my physical appearance. Words that would lift, words that put down even, depending on the moment, my mood, or my circumstances. And I did have one word picked out that I thought maybe summed up my life, but every time I sat down to create with that word in mind I couldn’t see beyond the blank canvas. The deadline for the challenge came and went and still I had nothing. It was a good word, an inspiring word, a word that gave me many ideas of what I wanted to say, but I finally resigned myself to the fact that it must not be the word. So I let it go and sat back down in front of that blank canvas and that’s when it hit me:

I am pregnant!

With pregnancy there is a time of development that is necessary for the baby, but uncomfortable for the mother. Morning sickness, weird cravings, expanding waistline, midnight anxiety, and false labor. This pregnancy of mine has been no different.

The past two years have been a few of the most difficult of my life. My husband lost his job two years ago marking the beginning of a season of difficulties and trials that turned my world upside down. Painful trials, difficult times that I begged God to remove me from. But I’ve come to realize that the pains, not unlike the pains of labor, have had a special purpose. Intentionally designed, as with the pushing necessary to give birth, to cause me to push past the stagnant place I was once content to graze and dare to give birth to my dreams.

Like a child growing in the womb, these dreams have been inside of me, growing, developing and waiting for their time to come. And as with any pregnancy the pain of labor had to be endured in order to give birth. The pain comes with the promise of a new life.

“A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come; but when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world.” John 16:21

Last week I put my notice in at my job, a literal end to my labor? No. Giving birth to this dream will be hard. I will have to nurture it through its infancy in order for it to survive. But I can’t hold it back anymore, this dream I have of becoming an artist full time. I am pregnant.

Pregnant with ideas, and life, and desire, and hope, and possibilities!