heres the story about this  canvas in the bottom left. its good. i promise!

Surprisingly, this love story emerged…with no effort of mine. um, i could never come up with such an experience!The painting highlighted on my home page was born out of the idea of exploring the idea thats Gods people are like oaks of righteousness   BUT THATS NOT WHAT IT WAS SUPPOSE TO BE ABOUT! wow!
 
Over the summer of 07 i was running after love, grace, mercy, relief, answers, help, comfort… …looking to others, but mostly to the Lord (a fresh approach)…my heart was aching for things i had never ached for, or even known to ache for before. i found myself in physical pain many times as sorrow from disapointments surrounded the atmsophere of my thoughts, heart and history.  My heart was gray.  My mind was girgling in boggs of depression.  My eyes were glazed with the fog of loss. 

By Gods grace, he called me to him again and again and  time after time, heart break to heart break…yes, his grace brought me to suffering-intense suffering.

 …. i found myself saying, “this is all i have to offer lord…this brokenness…its all i got-i aint got what it takes. i just don’t…”….and God responded  ……..as he desired to respond, not as I would have scripted it.

often his responses were many…and they came after i relented (day after day), from my death grip of how i thought things should be.

 and all i could do was respond with surrender.  all i have to offer is my choice to desire.

a desire for the hope in God promises, instead of hope in my own conclusions.

and my desire was to trust the promise of the Lords love ( i needed him to help me trust  him)… despite what things looked like.  seriously, that was all i had. all i had was this choice to believe his promise…..i had to choose faith.

So….i would choose to face my times of poinant pain, loneliness, desperation, self condemnation, agony …armed with a choice to believe his Word (a choice, was my weapon against the war raging inside of and around me)… 

and then, i would approach the canvas. tears streaming down as the colors fell to find their place on the canvas.  somehow this process was an emence comfort for me.  strange….how in that silence of pain, I  found the sound of freedom….
 
on the other side of the pain…there was hope!  jesus promised me that my suffering was not in vain. and i chose, through his mercy, to believe him….what else, who else did i have to turn to…but the one who always opened his arms to me…with great pleasure.  i could not lean on my own understanding….nor that of others, though they did greatly encourage me.
 
on christmas eve, i was again struggling with dissapointment (as many of us do around the holidays) and began to paint, my mother by my side, decorating my tree….for i didn’t have the emotional strength actaully…and as i painted…the pain began to be pierced by a glimmer of hope-strange at first, i didn’t know what to think of this almost physical shift in my soul…this change of atmosphere in my heart…this…this…

…this hope, shivering in the dark…but flickering none the less…and warming as it went…until i said,
 
“you know, we just gotta keep going in the pain ……because theres another side to it…on the other side is joy…”
 
and my soul was rewoven to understand….a lover who had always known me beyond the depths of my perceptions…but whom i had just met

my  joy is Jesus-the reality of him, my relationship with him….. from glory to glory, from suffering to suffering….it is us sharing with him on the cross…what he experienced-so that he could be in relationship…loving perfect relationship with us. 
 
and.. a fews days later as i painted…the movements in my heart began to change into a new sound…, i began listening to a Nina Simone song, about how sad she was…how spring had arrived, but it was winter in her heart…how she should be dancing with the birds, but her heavy heart made it so she could not…
 
as i was painting to this i began giggling, laughing, kinda dancing too….and knowing…”how silly to feel so sad….when Jesus is our spring.”..really! was i really feeling and thinking and saying this! but yes, to my great surprise i was…i am!
 
Jesus is my springtime, which blossoms me as an oaks of righteousness planted in the living water of life… and he deepens my roots in the winter of sorrow.
 
and then …..
 
JESUS SHOWED UP  …being seen! 
 
I was bringing this canvas to the friend who commisioned it…and as my friends watched me carry this canvas into their home (a fews days after my 30th birthday party where it had been displayed for many to see)they exclaimed something i had never heard before about this painting
 
….”ITS JESUS”…what??? i am thinking, but then i looked…turned the canvas around…and behind the tears of paint, was the glorious image of my king, my savior, my lover….Jesus Christ..his face, crown of thorns…as he hung on the cross…
 
he had walked with me through every thought…every bit of anger, sadness, deepression, desperation, loneliness….joy and exuberation.  and he said to me…you didn’t have to make me show up… I chose to show up! I chose you to see me!
 
he had been there the whole time…and  NOW that my heart had been tilled and strengthened…he wanted me to see him.
 
i did not paint him.
he did. …because he is in love with me…and you…and all of us who are called to him
 
a lover wants to be known …he wants to be seen …..

and….Jesus… is the lover who will blow your mind!