The Creative Girl In Me

Recently, I participated in a challenge from MacKenzie Monroe whom I follow on Periscope (@BOLDTurquoise).  She created #HeartInHandChallenge to help women dig into the Word and write it out in a way that best met their style. She created a free downloadable bookmark that had the 30 verses (one for each day of November) on it.

Some ladies wrote out their verses on index cards or sticky notes.
Some ladies used their planners and wrote out the verse in an empty space.
Some used hand lettering, some used crafting materials.
Some painted pictures.

Because the challenge involved scripture writing I felt confident that if nothing else, I could simply record the verse in a notebook.  Simple. Easy. Can do. I've got this.


To sum up my artistic abilities I will say this: I am not an artist.  Stick people drawings intimidate me. Even paint-by-number kits are difficult for my psyche.

I have stacks of stamps, scrap-booking paper, eyelets, embellishments, etc. But they are just that, stacks. Unopened, unused and wasted money piles.


I want to be crafty. I want to be artsy. I know there is a Creative Girl living inside of me because she whispers ideas into the right side of my brain "here's an idea" or "remember when you were in that place and saw that thing you wanted to try and recreate" or even "think about this pattern" and so on. And, she won out multiple times when I was younger. I had dreams of becoming a record producer and would cut apart magazines and create "album covers" for artists and for music that did not yet exist.

I knew Creative Girl was inside as a young girl. I yearned to create and paint and express myself. I took art classes as electives during my junior high years. I really tried, but I could not seem to produce what the other students produced: at the least, mediocre work and at best, 7th-9th grade masterpieces.

Preparing for this challenge I grabbed an empty journal thinking that I would practice my lettering while copying my verses. I opened the crisp new pages of the journal and decided to at least try using some of my pretty paper...

And then my Creative Girl whispered to me "grab some paint, just try it and see".
So I did. I felt decent about what I saw after putting the paint covered brush to my journal pages.

And then, something beautiful happened. Creative Girl boldly said, "Alright Girl, let's see what you had locked up inside of you" and she took the brush and started to experiment.  And pretty things started to develop. Ideas flowed. Beauty started to unravel from my twisted self and opened up.

You see, the past year or so I have been working on me. The wounded, abused, neglected and shamed girl.  The people pleaser, the co-dependent, the easily offended girl.  The anxiety ridden and depressed girl. Those parts of me are healing. And as the Hand of God has started this healing process, my Soul Clutter has started to swim to the top like the dross from silver.  The impurities floated to the surface and He wiped them away.  And Creative Girl finally had a clear path to come closer to my heart, my soul, the right side of my brain.

 

 

They are not master pieces, they probably would not be hung in a gallery, but I like them. My junior high school art teacher might critique me on the depth or dimensions or blending. But I know the journey it took to travel from a girl who was hard on herself and didn't think that her stick people were worth putting on paper to the girl who threw all self negative thinking aside and took the pretty paper and pots of paint and decided to just go for it.   

I would love to be able to express thanks to Mrs. Monroe who unknowingly was used by God to help me express myself. Maybe someday I will be able to do that outside of Instagram or Periscope.  

{Purse}onally Yours,

Tina