Creative Faith: Where my Light comes from

 "There are two ways of spreading light: 
to either be the candle or the mirror that reflects it." 

This quote by Edith Wharton is the source of Candle & Mirror Creative and everything that I stand for, everything that I do. My words, my art all come from my want to inspire, to love others and share hope & beauty in all the brokenness that tries to take over the spaces around us...but it's important to let you know where my light comes from; or, rather, from whom. 

Earlier in 2020 I was listening to Cory Asbury's Reckless Love on repeat, creating intuitively in my art journal. Here are the results of all I created that day...

In an ugly and unbelieving world, I'm often asked by people, "How can you have such strong faith?" When people cannot see God, it's hard to understand how others do so clearly. 

I get it. I've been there. Not only have I been there, but spent most of my 39 years there - unseeing, unbelieving and nearly hopeless.

But i'm enamored today by God's reckless love; all the ways He has loved me through, out of and past so many things. So many ways has His love been evident in my life from the very beginning that now I cannot help but see it. 

I was...

a child of alcoholism, surrounded by addiction. 

loneliness

A confused and dangerously rebellious adolescent. 

I've suffered through lust, longing to find love in every wrong place that so easily presented itself. 

I lived through...

anger

rage

recklessness

depression & anxiety

violence

self loathing and self harm

my own alcohol abuse and drug use

carelessness

dishonesty

lying

cheating

hate. 

And yet He saved me. 

He spared me. Not from hardship, no - there was plenty of that. I witnessed and felt things people shouldn't, especially children. BIG adult things, the very things we usually try to protect our children from knowing. 

Yet He was there. God waited. He loved and He protected and He purposed  it all for His plans. 

And He wouldn't let me go. 

He didn't let me die, He didn't let me harm myself. I was reparable. I didn't know it, but He did and He never let go. 

When I didn't believe, when I had no idea of who He was or is, He remained...waiting. Ever pursuant He dropped seeds of His love all along, enough to keep me going, to keep me moving, to keep me just alive enough inside to move a little more. 

And when I had the glimpse of Him and still denied Him, He loved me still. 

He loved me right through questioning and doubt, through anger at Him, through denial of Jesus, through all of my putting idols in front of Him and above him. 

He kept on loving me in whispers, knowing that sooner or later I'd know His voice enough to come a little closer. 

And the time would come when I would finally find myself ready, when He would leave the other 99 to come find me and bring me fully to Him. 

Coming to know Him certainly hasn't been the end of my strife - I still suffer, there are still many hard times. Now, though, the difference is that I have God. I lean on God - on truth, on light and on my purpose in Him. 

I know God and trust Him and live for what He will make of it all. I've seen His beautiful handiwork in all the mess so far, I cannot fathom what He has in store. 

 So I live for Him and seek to share His light and love with others, above all else, in every way I can. 

I know with every fiber of my being that every little thing was part of my arriving right here, in Him. Now I create and share for Him hoping that others will also see beauty in this broken world and find where it comes from, experiencing His reckless love in a new, beautiful way they've never known before.