Trust, Hmm...

...Vulnerable = No Can Do Compadre!

I might get hurt!

Came across this today

"Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and produces wonderful results."

James 5:16 (NLT)

and thought 'Yep, more honesty would be good. Less of the unintentional belittlement through 'helpful' advice on how I could be doing something so much better if only I did it their way because it's so perfect :P!'.

I may be the only person to feel this and I'm going to be okay with putting it out there and may enjoy the near silence with my friends the crickets but I think that if there was more real support and less judgment and empty talk then I wouldn't feel so cautious about having real, open and honest relationships with others. I've become so protective since becoming a mother that I know I now bring a somewhat cynical, at times, attitude to my friendships.

I know!

That's so bad right?!

You don't have to tell me, I live it :S

It's an inner attitude which really frustrates me. Hmm.... I'm worried I'm not making a clear point of what I feel... I guess I'm trying to say that I have been the victim of and yep, I'll be honest, a perpetrator of, using a shared problem to gain support in a backhanded manner instead of receiving or giving the support that I or my friend needed .

What I'm getting at is if I was to share a problem with A (A is nobody by and by, but it could actually have been me :(, A would console me nicely yes but would in fact unintentionally turn the situation into something about themselves by pointing out how well they're doing with their family (children) and really I should be doing it their way because it is, The Way. So what's happening is that I'm actually supporting my friend A by making them feel great about what they're doing because if only I was doing it their way then I would get it right. Except there are no right ways, only different methods which are unique to each family. Sure we can definitely learn from each other and trust me, oh my goodness, have I! But golly gosh, gee heck, I would love to feel less judged, more supported and have a more open and trusting heart to give better exactly that. That which I dearly want and recognize that I have been fortunate to receive.

Back to 'The Way', I respect and admire differences. Ideas are what keeps our world moving forward. Could you imagine a cookie cutter world in which we were all the same. Yech! Well, only if you were like me! Bahahaha, so kidding!

The verse sounds so lovely doesn't it. We confess in all honesty that not only are we imperfect but despite that or perhaps because of it we will be loved more by our friends - when we're vulnerable, trusting, honest and real.

I'll share my pain, confusion, frustration and heartache and I will be helped into spilling my tears. Then I will be lifted up in Prayer to the one who will heal and forgive. And I know that when my friend is in need, I may not have the right words to say but I'll be needed there and I will readily give the same. I'll wrap my friend in love, I'll protect and care for them when they are in need. I will lift them in prayer and pray for their forgiveness and healing as they have done for me. I can be counted on to not judge. There will be no convoluted wording to build my self-esteem at anothers expense and I will control the nasty little voices that try to crowd out what is right and I realize that others suffer similarly.

Maybe I have the interpretation of the verse wrong but I guess I'm taking what I need from it tonight and when I next come across it, I'll learn something else again from it but tonight I know that I need to trust more, love more, pray more, be open more, be real more.

Introspection

Time for a closer analysis of me.

It's Sunday morning and I'm working my way through some materials on homeschooling, parenting, life and Christianity. I'm sitting at my own desk with all the materials neatly arranged just waiting for me to move forward and commit fully to what I believe. To what I might know, if I let myself. But why do I hold back? Make excuses? Put it off until later? Raise impossible barriers so I can defend myself against those who may never ask and don't really have any business asking? I'm talking about faith. My faith. What I believe.

I'm such a people pleaser that I find it hard to move forward in my life and make a commitment to a belief system. It frightens me. What will my husband think? I know he's supportive to the utmost and possibly ridiculously so. Mr E always encourages and never belittles what I'm thinking about. He always listens and rarely if ever casts a judgment. Of course it is important to me and my marriage about what I believe and how that affects our family unit and also what I may come to expect from my beautiful husband but that doesn't necessarily make me the people pleaser I claim to be.

My values are like the leaves blowing in the wind. My closest girl friends are either non-believers or have a view of the universe that is radically different from my own. But I can always see their point. I can validate easily how they have come to their conclusions for themselves but when it comes to myself what do I have? Not that strength. Words fail me and my thoughts are incoherent, much less explainable and defensible. But I guess that's the key, defense. Why do I feel the need to defend myself with family, friends and acquaintances? Why do I need to feel validated by anothers' approval? It's ridiculous and crazy and makes me want to scream! Who am I? I have to identify myself through my own value system not someone else's which I can only sum up through their words and actions.

I'm also more afraid of something else.

If I believe in God and in Christ I know I'm not worthy. I know I can't live by all the 'rules'. I know I'll break them because I am weak. I am not virtuous. I have a mind that thinks what it will and I battle with myself and often lose.

So, I turn to prayer.

I've always told myself that I'll make a decision regarding my spirituality when I know enough. Bit of a cop out though isn't it. When would I truly know enough.

There are women in my life who are beautiful examples of Christian womanhood. When I am troubled, confused or want support it is with them I will find my strength.

And my husband.

And I will keep praying, continuously :)

(a small disclaimer - my blog is for my thoughts and never will I claim to be clear, concise and make any sense. But I value this space. I have somewhere to come and write about how I'm feeling. It aids me in clarity and I hope that it's understandable but if not, that's okay. Because already I feel my fear ease a little through 'talking' about it. Thanks for hanging out with me this morning and reading my ramble :D)

and now for something a little bit different....

The weekend just passed I had the most amazing time with a small group of other like minded souls in a little coffee shop down town. But as strange as it sounds, we weren't consuming steaming hot beverages and indulging in idle conversation. So what were we up too?

Learning, creating and pushing our artistic boundaries.

Our little town isn't conveniently located by a large metro area and any courses that we may want to participate in at the local college, are scheduled during the day, which is absolutely the wrong time for a stay at home, homeschooling mummy. Instead, I've been satisfying my need to learn from an art teacher by taking advantage of this wonderful little coffee shop, come glorious bookstore and art gallery combined. Heaven! The lovely lady who runs this inspirational shop also adds to her stores versatility by organizing a variety of courses run by professionals for the public to enjoy.

This has been my second time at such an offering. So lucky. Pictured below are some of my creations. But before viewing, I'll share with you a hard lesson I learnt from the inspiring and talented teacher.

Don't create to please another. The intention is dishonest and it interferes with the work you are producing. Create for the pleasure and be in the now and have no fear or worries about what you are doing. Did you know that Picasso would paint enormous works of art only to paint over them and start again! Horrifying, but the motivation of his pieces was from the process and he would push beyond his boundaries and learn from that. The final element I took away from this course was, let your subject speak in your work. What does that last phrase mean? The easiest way for me to explain it is through an example. One of the many subjects presented for us over the weekend was grass. An enormous, dense clump of grass. Heavy at the bottom but sparse at its height. Tall grass, with great soft clumps of seeds gathered at the ends. There was movement in this grass. I could imagine the wind whispering as it passed through its strands. Sharply spiking and falling gracefully, were thin, pale green leaves tapering to sharp ends which I thought I would feel catching on my skirt if I brushed past.

So for the subject of the grass to speak, my creation should have had the elements of density and space, movement, softness and sharpness. There's a picture of my grass further down.

Throughout our time together, the class experimented with a variety of drawing medium and methods. Just a quick mention on a method called contour drawing. I had heard of it but before this had never done it. Contour drawing means (my understanding) to look at your subject whilst you're drawing on your paper. By running the eye carefully and slowly around the edge of the subject we can then communicate what we are seeing with the lines of our drawing... the catch is, you don't look at your paper whilst drawing and the pencil isn't to leave the paper either. Hmmm. Fun to think about.

Here is an example of contour drawings of an iron. The beauty is that the drawing is simple and can communicate the essence of your subject.



Other pieces of work from my weekend of exploration :)

An Ink water wash, a twig as a brush, and a contour drawing of pears with ink.

Charcoal and eraser.
Firstly we blacked out our paper with charcoal and then we were given a subject, in this case a jug. We then 'carved' out the picture of the jug from the charcoal with the eraser.

And this was my final product for the weekend in which I combined several of the different skills I had learnt, to create my interpretation of the 'grass'. What do you think? Does it 'speak' of the grass?



I do know that it was fun, kind of hard and definitely completely unexpected.

Kookaburra was buzzed when he saw all that I did and had been excited before this . He'd been with me when I shopped for art supplies. So in our homeschool this week ,we took to the park so he could get a chance to learn from my new skills.






Kookaburra used an ink water wash for his background, then he did a charcoal rubbing of his subject and then finally our budding artist applied ink on the tip of a bendy twig and painted his lovely palm tree. Unfortunately we had to leave before he could finish but that's on our 'to do' list over the weekend. So far it looks great :)

Kookaburra loves art. I wonder where he gets that from :)

So what does Kangaroo do when he doesn't want to join in with the art stuff?



Climb a tree of course :)

A parting wish from me to you, try this 'out of the box' art. It was truly liberating after years of not truly appreciating gallery offerings beyond 'as the eye sees it' contributions.