Snippets and Snatches

…new adventures in my art in mixed media collage. My grandmother would be proud that her basic sewing lessons weren’t a complete waste of time. These are a few of my favorite things: sea glass, golden threads and beads, flowers all in a sea of blue.

Many years ago I drew a picture of Our Lady of Guadalupe for a Catholic women’s group. The image was an introduction to Mary the Mother of Jesus in a way this Protestant never knew and led me to hang a print of Her by my bed. Recently, I felt moved to draw Her again and honor Her with my pen from my heart.  

Three times I saw this humongous tortoise on the side of the road as I drove my daily work route. One day he was in the middle of a grassy field and people were all around him taking pictures. How curious, I thought, but I didn’t stop. Another time I saw him as I rushed back to work with my lunch. This time he was in the parking lot of the gas station on the corner and two old men were blocking him from crossing the busy highway. Again, people were taking pictures of him. Not your every day sort of thing in the city surrounding Charleston, SC for sure! My curiosity peaked and I remembered to mention this strange occurence to coworkers when I got back to the office. We wondered how such a creature was just wandering around and worried he would get hit by a car. On my way home that day he was still there at the gas station with the old guy standing by his side hours later. This time I became one of the curiosity seekers and stopped to take his picture. His two foot long frame and calm sauntering through the parking lot amazed me.

I really was worried some terrible fate would befall him in the big, wide civilized world of North Charleston so I asked the old man about him. As it turns out the tortoise is his pet and he takes him around the city in the nearby trailer he pointed out to me for people to see. He said he has an animal rescue and this is one of his rescues, an African tortoise. Of course, he accepts donations so I gave him some money and snapped a few pictures. I was glad he wasn’t lost anyway and in no danger of being hit by a car.

I do hope I have the ability to notice such unexpected surprises in the new year. I could really use a tortoise-paced 2013, slowing down enough to enjoy the simple things sauntering through my days. I wish the same for you! May we all be blessed with joyful surprises along the journey this year!

Details of a photo collage…happy moments to treasure forever.

In this time of Lent when self-denial, repentance for wrong-doing, and self-examination become the clarifying force of humble pray-ers, I can only hope that through the mercy and grace of God, He will hear my prayers for others and that in spite of troublesome me those prayers for healing will bear fruit. Life is full of challenges to bear and overcome and I am lost without the saving grace and peace I have found in Christ. I just finished Brennan Manning’s All is Grace that I got last weekend on a women’s retreat. In his words, “My message, unchanged for more than fifty years, is this: ‘God loves you unconditionally, as you are and not as you should be, because nobody is as they should be.’ ” God can make us better than we are and I don’t know about you but I am still a work in progress!

…my favorite writing and thinking spot.

Hydrangeas, pencil drawing…One of my favorite flowers is the hydrangea.  It is a hearty shrub that survives well in the south and I love the colorful blue and purple bouquet clusters that grow in spite of nasty climate conditions.  In our old house, the first home we owned that was quite small and had a huge yard, hydrangea bushes were one of the few flowers I could count on to grow in spite of my ungreen thumb, small children, and the many dogs we had through the nine years we lived there.  They have become a symbol of a very happy time in our lives when our family had endless adventures in that wondrous yard and humble home.  Occasionally, I drive by the old house and I think how little we had materially in those early years of our family life, but my memories are filled with the joy of small children, now grown and married!  We had what mattered which was a lot of love and though we struggled financially on one income, so I could be at home with the kids, we lived more simply then on far less.

So, when my son Corey and his fiancee’ Sarah gave me hydrangeas for Mother’s Day this year I placed them on the coffee table in the livingroom.  In the morning sunlight they looked so beautiful I had to draw them.  I drew them in several sittings and each time memories of life in the old house would fill my mind.  There wasn’t a single hydrangea bush growing in our yard at our house we have lived in now for thirteen years.  I did have some in pots on the porch that we had bought for Sophia’s bridal shower over a year ago but I never got around to planting them in the yard as I intended.

Corey rectified this situation earlier this summer when the bigger part of his Mother’s Day present was the promise to plant all of them for me in the yard.  He did it right, too!  He weeded and replaced soil with a liner underneath and made this neglected flowerbed in the front yard beautiful with the hydrangeas and a rosebush.  I was so grateful!  But I admit the unbearably hot summer kept me from staying on top of weeding the garden and the poor hydrangeas became overcome with choking weeds and grass.  I just want my newly married son to know that a few weeks ago I finally got to it and found the hydrangeas still surviving.  Wishing those weeds away just wouldn’t get the job done!  As I pulled the weeds I was struck by the metaphor that this is also true of relationships and my spiritual life.  Wishing away the weeds (sin and negative thoughts) choking me just won’t help my garden (my life) grow and sometimes while I sit back and wait through dry periods for the rain to water the flowers and the sunlight to make them grow sometimes I have to take responsibility and help things along by doing the unpleasant work of weeding and watering.  The drawing reminds me to tend to my garden and do the work.

I am grateful for beautiful flowers and the lessons I continually need to learn and relearn!  

What is the one thing that when you need more of it there seems to be less of it to go around?  Patience!  Sometimes when I think of myself as a reasonably patient person that is when I find myself in simultaneous situations that tell me otherwise.  Oh sure, I may be able to forbear many circumstances with a smile on my face but it is the resulting inner turmoil boiling my blood that tells me how far I have to go and proves my inadequate supply of the virtue of patience.  Really, I feel like I’m stating the obvious here and thereby removing any constructive need to write about getting more of something I sorely need, as if to hope that in saying it I might stumble upon a magic stepping stone filled with patience and when I touch it I am filled with jolts of calm forbearance in just the right amount, according to the intensity of the moment when it is needed the most.  Why can’t patience be like a magic stepping stone?  That would be so much easier!

So, when the shedding animals have me walking through tumbleweeds of hair and I want to hire a maid to deal with what I can’t, if I could only rub the magic stone I’d be like Mary Poppins singing about the joys of housework!  Or, when the sizzling, southern heat is zapping my energy a touch of the magic patience stone might convince me I’m really beachside at the arctic circle with the penguins and polar bears!  I wish! I wish! I wish!

Where can I get more patience since there is no magic stepping stone?  Honestly, there is only one thing that has helped me, sometimes after the fact of my impatience rearing its ugly head like a wild horse in a lasso.  It is heard so much it may seem trite but it works when I remember to say the words:  “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”  The clincher here is that sometimes I need way MORE wisdom to know the difference between the things I can change and the things I cannot change.  And I often find that the courage to change the things I can usually requires me to set better boundaries and assert myself to keep them in place.  Only God’s touch can change my heart.

This was an awesome sight, driving around the Charleston/North Charleston area to see Pedro’s painting “Strings” on billboards for the North Charleston Arts Festival!  He is too humble to post this joyous moment in his life but I am so proud of him I have to share as he calls it his “fifteen minutes of fame” quoting Andy Warhol.  A friend said “May you have many more fifteen minutes of fame then!”  I concur, wholeheartedly!  True friends are the ones genuinely happy for you when something wonderful happens to you and when the going is rough they are the ones still standing by no matter what.

I heard there were 13 billboards around the area and we probably only saw 3 but one day I made a point to bring my camera and take a picture of one before they all disappear off the side of the roads.  It wasn’t too risky and I was very careful.  Pedro doesn’t know I got a picture so if he ever checks his FB account he will be very surprised!!  Go Pedro!  You are an awesome artist!