Most often, I create from a very real and raw place. What can emerge is a piece that is not perfect, not polished, and certainly not ready for prime time. The dimensions a bit off, but dead on authentic to the moment.
I've been reading a book that I started to read nearly a decade ago. I'll finish it tonight. It's called "Victory over the Darkness" by Neil Anderson. I'm humbled and learning where I've been wrong in relationships and dealing with situations, but I'm also learning that I take on responsibilities and burdens that were never mine to handle or to carry.
Do you do that? Or, are you like me and didn't have an awareness of the heavy things you carry that you were never created to?
Notice how she doesn't quit, how she won't be defined by a snapshot of darkness, how, though she is in a moment of difficulty, goodness is growing around her.
There is a verse in the bible (Song of Solomon 1:5-6) "I am dark, but lovely, O daughters of Jerusalem, like the tents of Kedar, like the curtains of Solomon.
Do not gaze at me because I am dark because the sun has looked upon me. My mother's sons were angry with me; they made me keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept!"
She is dark because she worked hard in the sun all day. A sign of beauty in the day was light and lovely skin. She wasn't a girl about town, she was working and working hard. She was told that, though she didn't meet those beautiful social standards, she...to him who loved her, was beautiful.
That is how God see us. He sees us as we are in those discouraged, broken, seemingly dark moments and calls us beloved. He calls us beautiful. He calls us loved.
