Baby Hannah!! (I'm an AUNT!)

I don't want to be afraid of drawing.

Yesterday after Intern class, I stopped by a local shoe store to try to find, what I like to call, “dance feet”—nude colored, sued, sandal-like dance shoes.  They didn’t have them.  So instead of going home I went shopping with Jesus.  As I walked out of the shoe store and into Target, I felt him whisper, “I have something for you in Michael’s,” and so I marched into Target instead, knowing that I’d buy nothing.  I looked at swimsuits, shirts, jeans, shoes, wallets, jewelry… nothing.  I exited the store and trudged through the rainy parking lot to my truck.  I looked across the road at Michael’s.  And there He was again, “I have something for you in Michael’s.”  “Oh!  Like modge-podge and paint brushes and spray to finish my fundraiser,” I thought, “Or feathers for my painting!”  I headed over to Michael’s—which, in case you’re unfamiliar with Michael’s it is a craft/art supplies store.  I go in.  I wander through the aisles; beads, feathers, paints, canvases, brushes, calligraphy pens… nothing.  I can’t find the modge-podge or acrylic spray.  Near the canvases, I notice a “how-to-draw-horses” book.  Curious, I flip through.  I put it down dissatisfied with their teaching methods and confident that if I bought it all I’d do is replicate their finished product and have an absurdly unoriginal, though pretty textbook-drawing.  (I quickly stuff the lid back on my old drawing issues.) 

Jesus: “Hmm, let’s look at the sketchbooks.”  Me: “Fine.”  I turn the corner and face a wall of sketch books.  I pick up a few and put them down—confident that I’ll never need to buy another one of those.  Jesus:  “This is what I have for you.”  Me: “No.  Really? Why?  Do I have to?”  Jesus:  “This is what I have for you.”  I start looking for something I might buy.  Am I really doing this?  I hate drawing.  Spiral-bound, hardback, large, small, removable, 70lb or 60lb, PRICE, texture.   Hmm, that one is pretty… expensive.  Ugh too small, too cheap, too not for me.  And there it was:  off-white, canvas, hardback cover; not too big for transport, but not too small for using; decent paper; acceptable price.  Jesus:  “That’s the one.”  Me:  “I don’t think I want one of those; I don’t use them.” Jesus:  “That’s the one.”  I picked it up.  I put it down.  I picked it up.  I put it down.  I picked it up, and this time I walked away with it.  I grabbed some new pencils (I hate those too, but they are good for drawing—they are pretty versatile, and in this case woodless and pretty exciting).  I grab a piece of chocolate in the checkout line as a treat for being good and march back into the rain. 

So it’s gonna be like this, eh?  Apparently I’ve got some drawing issues to deal with. 

A History of Me and Art:

Growing up I loved to draw.  I don’t remember using coloring books much; they were too easy.  At six-years-old my school tested me for its Talented and Gifted Art program (TAG Art).  My mom submitted a few random drawings of mine and they scored them.  In 1994, I had the highest score ever for a child of my age at Prince Edward County Public Schools.  At seven-years-old I enrolled in the TAG Art program.  From 2^nd to 4^th grade I had two art classes each week—one with my regular class and the other with the TAG kids.  From 5^th to 8^th grade I had one hour of TAG Art five days per week.  I had the same teacher all seven years—she was great!  She never pushed me to the artistic strife of fighting myself for perfection; it was all about learning, creativity, and enjoying my friends and my gift.  Those were happy times.  In 9^th grade I entered high school, teachers changed, assignments changed, grades changed, everything changed.. I stopped art pretty much until my senior year, at which point I took up doing acrylic paintings on canvas. 

I started to dabble in impressionistic art—it was less pressure and very expressive.  Gradually painting was redeemed—I’m not afraid to see my own paintings on the wall.   It doesn’t pain me to share them with friends, or to look at them myself.  My paintings are now a place of meeting God, a visual record of my personal restoration and revelation.  (And some of them are actually pretty good!) 

But still the drawing thing is tough.  Maybe it’s because… well, I actually don’t know why.  All I know is that drawing frustrates me—I know how to recreate what I see but can’t seem to accomplish it.  My eye is good; my hand struggles; my heart refuses to practice.  I view my own playful cartoon-like sketches as cop-outs (standards…), and get frustrated when I lack the patience to see the drawing though to the finish (condemnation maybe, or another standard).  How did I miss the memo that a sketch is an incomplete drawing and not a masterpiece on paper?  I know I’ve done some comparisons.. and loathing.  I was just talking to a friend about the way artists chronically loathe their work, yet see their work as themselves, and thus loathe themselves, and trying to fix it all by fixing the art which they loathe… it’s a nasty cycle.   I don’t want to be in that cycle.  It sounds like performance.   I don’t want to be afraid of drawing. 

And so, now I’m the owner of a pretty white sketchbook with 110 blank pages and two snazzy woodless graphite pencils.   I’m pretty sure Jesus has got this covered… He’s not one to lead you to Jericho’s walls and not help you take them down.  I know that there is a gift, a promise, freedom, and a facet of the Lord’s heart to be found in drawing… Jesus, help me to find it!   

"Do not neglect the spiritual gift within you, which was bestowed on you through prophetic utterance with the laying on of hands by the presbytery." (1Ti 4:14)

Becuase I don't feel like writing this week...

Realizing the Right to Read

I graduated from my university just a little over a month ago, with a degree in English. It took me 4 1/2 years; add that to the 13 years in public school (kindergarten through 12th grade) and the 2 years of preschool/hanging out in my brother's home school lessons, and I have been in school for 19 1/2years.  I'm only 22. The transition out of academia has been nice thus far--such a relief to have no papers or exams looming overhead; though, admittedly I have tried to assign myself a paper or two already.  Despite the relief, I am still struggling to adjust to my new-found reading liberties.  Ever since high school I've not had time for endless leisurely reading, and now that the freedom is found, I don't knowwhere to begin!  For years, as a matter of self discipline, I've ignored books, their titles taunting me from the self.  When I read nothing else happens; I reject socialization, I don't care to eat, I definitely don't sleep, I don't even check Facebook, and when in school, I didn't do homework.

Now that school is out of the way, I have more time and the freedom to pick my own books, but I'm alternately bored and overwhelmed with the choices.  This very moment I have several books begging to be read:  Seabiscuit, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, Eragon, A Priest and Nun and their Son, Write To Ignite, If This Were a Dream What Would It Mean, and The Importance of Being Earnest. There are also other, less pressing, books:  Anne of Green Gables (the series; I have all 6), A Picture of Dorian Gray, Sherlock Holmes (Vol 2), the last few books of Narnia, Joan of Arc, A Tale of Two Cities, etc.. A few weeks ago I read The Alchemist, and over the holidays I read Pride and Prejudice for the 10th time.

I know I'm over thinking this!  I'm still regarding my reading time as too precious to be wasted on anything but the best book.  I feel like that child adopted from a 3rd-world country that hides food for later rather than eating it, just I'm a college graduate hiding books. 

Any advice on how to acclimate myself to the freedom to read?  Anyone know any good books?

A dreamer who's scared of dreaming.

Way back in December, well maybe just two posts ago, I started processing through one of my forgotten/forsaken dreams—horses.   When I began the post I had no idea how deeply embedded in me my passion for horses still was, and honestly I had little concept of it even after I’d finished writing.  Three days after posting Once Upon a Dream I found out.  I found out that I really do still care—deeply, and it wasn’t until I was crying so intensely that I couldn’t stand that I understood.    

It all started at Intern.  We (the 20 or so interns) were asked to individually pray and write down how we know God loves us.  We each got up one by one to share; when it was my turn to share I became incredibly nervous (which doesn’t happen often, even in front of masses of strangers).  I started sharing:  “I know this will sound a little cryptic, but I’ll say it, and then explain what it means.  I know God loves me because He gives me the moon with a ring around it and a star so I do not lack.”  I proceeded to explain that in some of the roughest times in my life God has comforted me with stars and the moon as reminders of hope and His promises.   I began sharing one of those stories—one which explains the bit about the moon with a ring—the night I decided to drop APSC (If you want to hear it, let me know and I’ll post it later). “The night that I decided to drop APSC, the decision actually came down to trusting God with horses.  It then had little to do with careers or parents or grades; the last decision was all about the pretty ponies and trust.  I was so afraid to let go of my hold on my passion again, afraid that it might not come back, afraid that it actually was over this time” (Once Upon a Dream).   That night God whispered to me about trusting Him to do what He promises—to hold, protect, and restore my dreams.  

As I began to tell my friends about that night, masses of emotion welled up from the depths of my heart.  I started crying.  I looked out at them as I was confused by my own emotions, saying, “I didn’t think I still cared about this.”  As I finished one of the intern leaders turned to me and began sharing the heart of God with me.  (Paraphrasing...) “Amanda, I believe that God wants to redeem horses; that He is going to restore them to you.  I don’t know when; I don’t know how.  But I believe God planted this dream in you.  God loves horses too.  God created horses for you.” He took a purse strap and asked me to hold it like a pair of reins; I started sobbing.  He and another leader and one of my bff’s started praying for me; I collapsed wailing.  (An aside: It’s funny to me that I cry more intensely as an adult than I ever did as a child.)  I cried loudly and for a long time.  It was good.  

In the weeks following I've allowed my heart to indulge a bit in the horsey things—somewhat ironically I watched Dreamer, I started reading Seabiscuit (I'm still only through the intro and first 2 pages), I considered looking for a way to teach beginner riding lessons, I thought about emailing my old riding coach just to catch up, and I allowed myself for just a moment to imagine riding my horse again.  But I'm still scared, or is it scarred, maybe both.  I find myself scared of dreaming again, dreaming from the depths of who I am, and either never realizing those dreams or willfully walking away from them again.  Still I feel God whispering, "Just trust."

"Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but desire fulfilled is a tree of life." (Proverbs 13:12).  

“Delight yourself in the LORD; and He will give you the desires of your heart.  Commit your way to the Lord, trust also in Him, and He will do it.” (Psalm 37: 4-5). 

"In Your right hand there are pleasures forever."  (Psalm 16: 11c).

"'There is a hope for your future,' declares the Lord, 'and your children will return to their own territory.'" (Jeremiah 31: 17).

Visual Spice:

I had a nice romp around the farm Tuesday with my camera; in two-and-a-half hours, I took three hundred photos… only forty-some amounted to anything worth keeping.   And I’ve discovered: 1- my dog is absurdly cute 2- I am kind of obsessed with trees 3- llamas dislike camera flashes.  Just to add some variety (and a break from novel-length posts) to my blog, here are some of my fave’s from the day:

 

Once Upon a Dream

A few days ago I watched a dorky-cute teen-girl movie, Ice Princess.  It’s about a girl who gives up a massive physics scholarship from Harvard to pursue ice skating.  Like all stories about pursuing dreams and passion, it got me thinking about my dreams, as I came into college and now as I leave college.  I had planned to attend Tech and study APSC ever since I first understood what college was, and as I entered college, riding was my passion.  I selected my top three schools by their riding programs—Virginia Tech, Sweet Briar, and Hollins.  This may seem a surprise to those who’ve watched my activities through college, for my visible passion is people.

To catch everyone up, here is a history of me and horses:  I ride Hunter, an English style originating with Foxhunting, so I do a good bit of jumping.  I own a horse, a Thoroughbred X Quarter Horse mare, 15.3ish, dark bay with dapples.  Her name is Angel (Queen of Hearts), and she’s 22 like me.  From about age 10 on, I was horse-obsessed.  I began riding at age 12 (roughly 5 years after most of my peers started).   I was good and very driven.  I loved competition.   I loved learning.  But most of all I loved the feeling of flying above the ground as the world and all its cares rolled away.  The summer between my college freshman and sophomore years, I actually trained to try out for the VT team—three months of exercise riding in return for private lessons and coaching.  But I never tried out; when I returned to school, riding came to a seemingly dead halt.  I stopped talking about it, I stopped doing it, and I even stopped thinking about it.  To this day I still don’t really know why… It was like I just gave up.  For no apparent reason I gave up horseback riding.  That spring I got a job cleaning horse stalls! Sometimes it was torture—I hadn’t ridden in months, but was surrounded by horses daily.  There were some days I would just sit in the barn crying, begging God for a way to ride.  I didn’t get to ride regularly again until the following January; I got into a riding class at Tech.  It was amazing and redemptive in many ways!  I rode for two semesters, but had to stop when I dropped APSC. 

The night that I decided to drop APSC, the decision actually came down to trusting God with horses.  It then had little to do with careers or parents or grades; the last decision was all about the pretty ponies and trust.  I was so afraid to let go of my hold on my passion again, afraid that it might not come back, afraid that it actually was over this time.  The night that I chose to drop, I also chose not to try out for the riding team ever, a tryout which both of the coaches encouraged, and I chose not to take lessons at Tech.   It was a rough night.  But God showed up and moved massively in my heart.

Now as my undergraduate career comes to a close, I face feelings much like those of my sophomore year.  Horseback riding seems on the verge of slipping away.  Riding is an expensive hobby, and it doesn’t travel well.  I find myself preparing to bury my dream again, but my dreams aren’t dead.  And I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to bury a dream, but they don’t stay in the ground—even dead dreams seem to float back up to the surface.   I know what I exchanged my dreams for—the pursuit of people and relationships and Jesus; I don’t regret it at all. 

I don’t mean for this post to be “Everyone, look what Amanda gave up!” or a pity-party for myself, but more to digest doors closing and seasons shifting.  I walk away from graduation without the things I had planned on—the degrees, the ponies, the relationships—but I possess the things I needed—the truths, the family, the redemption.  I walk forward, yet again, to surrender and trust—to trust that my dreams are not dead, but are safely surrendered.  “It’s just in His hands to come back the way He wanted it, and this time without all the stress and struggle.”