I'm a happy tired. :)

Well, we wind up VBS at Central Baptist Church in Round Rock tonight. I was the leader for the music rotation for the 3rd and 4th graders. Jordan had wanted me to be his teacher this year since I had done preschool 2 years ago and was Abby's and Emily's teacher then, then last year I did 1st and 2nd, so I was Brynn's teacher. Jordan's particular group, the 4th-grade boys, was a group that was a particular challenge to everyone this year. There were about 20 of them! And they're boys! And did I mention they're all about 10 years old and... oh yeah, did I mention I get them right after they come from snack, which is usually full of sugar? :)

Actually, they were alot of fun, all four groups were and I got a chance not just to teach music, but there was a part of my 20 minutes where I got to teach bible concepts and that was a blast since on Sunday morning I'm usually teaching 4-year-olds. I love the little kids, but it was fun this week getting to touch on more abstract concepts.

The VBS theme was Hawaiian and my room was supposed to have a waterfall theme. I actually took a picture because I was so proud of the work I did on the waterfall. My kids pitched in too last week by drawing the lines on the palm tree fronds.

Also, I discovered sketching pens! A set was on clearance at Michael's marketed as pens for Manga anime, but as I found, they work just as well for landscape sketches. I'm also including a picture of my first painting that I did without step by step instruction. I simply imitated a painting in the gallery of the author of the instruction book I'm going through. My next step will be to pick my own subject. Nervous about that, but i need to take the leap I think.

To the ends of the Galaxy

A few of you may not know this song, but most of you do. We sang it in church this morning:

"God of Wonders, beyond our Galaxy... You are Holy."

This morning was one of those mornings where I tried to listen to the sermon, but God was preaching a somewhat different sermon to me during the one the Pastor was delivering. This song mentioned above was the last one we sang before the sermon started and God had already started speaking to me about the compass in my heart.

I thought about what it would be like to actually be "beyond our galaxy". If anyone saw the movie "Contact", they begin the movie by panning a shot away from a house on Earth and getting farther and farther away until the Earth is a speck, then our solar system is a speck and then our galaxy is too small to be seen and the sound is completely silent and you're left with this sense of complete awe at not only how small our planet is, but also how far it is possible to be from it. And the bible intimates that God's ways are higher than our ways and his love higher than our love in the sam the heavens are higher than Earth. God is that much more holy and distant from what we are. He is holy. He is beyond all our efforts.

As I imagined being "beyond our galaxy", it just sounded like rest. It sounded wonderful! I really wanted to be with God far away from all else like couples do on their honeymoon, where there is no interference from other obligations, other people, reality in general. :)

Then I started thinking about how distant I am now from even thinking about some of those people in my life that used to mean so much to me--their opinion, I should say, meant so much. There always seems to have been someone in my life whose opinion meant the world to me. In early years, it may have been a guy I had a crush on, or a friend who never really gave me their whole self but always held something back. And that person would then become the only person in the room when they were there, and sometimes would dominate my thoughts when I wasn't around them. It was like I had a compass in my heart like that one in "Pirates of the Carribbean" that always pointed at what you really want. It would always be honed in on that particular person and what they wanted, what they thought about me, how to please them. This compass would usually cause me to ignore people more well-deserving, ignore priorities and dull my sense of responsibility.

And it seems that our heart is made to do this thing, to have someone your hearts compass is pointed towards, someone who matters above all else, an other to care about. And what amazes me is how you can look back at some of those people and wonder, "How could I have allowed that person to mean so much to me?" And yet in the chronicle of a man stranded on an island portrayed in "Castaway", Tom Hanks' character becomes attached to a volleyball that he paints a face on and calls Wilson and truly mourns when the ball is lost in the ocean.

I am amazed at my own capacity to become too attached when I look back at the people in my life with a now objective perspective. I look at grade school pictures of some of the kids I had crushes on and they just look like regular school kids to me now... nothing that stepped off the pages of GQ or anything. And when I was in the work force, the early years, I was around people that I probably would never come across otherwise in my life. I worked at Merry Maids my last semester of college, and most of the women I worked with were very lower income and a few lived in trailers and there was this one women, Gloria, who befriended me who I became very emotionally entangled in the ups and downs of her crazy life. I probably treasured her acceptance because I wasn't exactly the most popular in that group of women, probably since they knew that they had to do this to make a living and I was just making a few extra bucks before I graduated from college and got married. So that fact that she befriended me was received by me with incredible gratitude. Now this woman means nothing to me...simply not on my radar.

Then there was Kim, a 20-something waitress at a Shoney's restaurant. This was a very unglamorous job with unglamorous people. I worked with her after my freshman year in college. I cared about whether she thought I was a good waitress and treasured her friendship. Now I don't even think about her.

I could list many others, but those are the ones that stick out the most for now.

So what this all brought me to actually tied back into the sermon from this morning. Psalm 86:11 says "Teach me your way, O LORD, and I will walk in your truth; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name." And the main idea of the sermon was to know truth, who is a person, Jesus. And our life should be ordered by that truth, or by that person, as is the case. And our problem tends to be that don't have one truth settled in our heart and we order our lives without Jesus as the central principle through which all our decisions are made. I think of an undivided heart as a heart whose compass completely fixed on Jesus.

So the rest that I felt in my heart as I imagined going to the ends of the universe to be with Jesus and everything else grows dim, that is the rest I want without actually having to be separated from people and responsibilities. People would stress me out alot less if I realized how much more important God's opinion is and their opinion would fade into nothingness. I want to have that confidence with people that I would have after a long separation, but I want to separate myself now, in my heart, without actually being separated from the people.

Those people from the past aren't even on my radar anymore.

Lord, can I live this way? Can live beyond the radar and in your embrace? I want to draw near to my Holy God and as I grasp, with the help of your Spirit, Lord, how much more you are, how much beyond, how much better... as I grasp this, all fear of man would simply fall off the radar. Lord, fix the compass of my heart on you. Give me an undivided heart. I pray that you would be the only one whose opinion matters and that I would do everything as unto you.

From 1 Corinthians 7:

29What I mean, brothers, is that the time is short. From now on those who have wives should live as if they had none; 30those who mourn, as if they did not; those who are happy, as if they were not; those who buy something, as if it were not theirs to keep; 31those who use the things of the world, as if not engrossed in them. For this world in its present form is passing away.
32I would like you to be free from concern. An unmarried man is concerned about the Lord's affairs—how he can please the Lord. 33But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world—how he can please his wife— 34and his interests are divided. An unmarried woman or virgin is concerned about the Lord's affairs: Her aim is to be devoted to the Lord in both body and spirit. But a married woman is concerned about the affairs of this world—how she can please her husband. 35I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but that you may live in a right way in undivided devotion to the Lord.

Lord, let my heart be married to you alone.

First attempt at rocks was much more successful than my first attempt at a tree-filled hillscape. I wasn't using the right sponge, technique with the sponge, and this was cheap paper and I was just doing about everything wrong, including not allowing my initial wash to dry before sponging in the negative space.

Here's what I came up with about 5 tries later:

My seascape

This is my favorite so far, because it looks very different from the painting from the instructional book. I just used the instructions as a guideline and ended up wtih something really different.

Doors are more fun to paint than I imagined!

Here's my latest. Nick went to practice bacground vocals, and this is what I did after the kids went down.

Well, this has been a season of new things. First of all, I got my hair done last Friday, new cut and color and highlights. Yes, I know I said I was proud of my gray hairs and that I'd earned every one of them. But when your husband says, "Why don't you use some of our stimulus check to go get your hair done?", you don't hesitate! And I'm so glad I did. I look 10 years younger and it also encouraged me to start taking better care of my skin again and putting on makeup more often. I guess it's kind of like Flylady's principle of the "shiny sink". If you clean your sink to perfection, it motivates you to make the rest of the kitchen match your sink.

I also picked back up on two old hobbies. I've been enjoying them alot because I think these are the only skills I've honed since I don't know when that are simply for my own enjoyment (as opposed to cooking or gardening, etc., which tend to be motivated by wanting to be a better housewife and better serve my family.)

First, I picked my guitar back up. And I was nervous about taking this instrument back into my hands because it has caused pain and suffering before. I've struggled with carpal tunnel syndrome over the years and I always had to give up because playing would make my hands start going numb. But this time--and I don't know if it's because I prayed for healing or if it's because I've finally been focussing on correct form--my wrists and hands have not suffered a bit from playing! I've really been enjoying playing and have started to finally get a feel of what it must feel like just to play for enjoyment.

See, I first picked up guitar because I wanted to impress the adorable Derek English who led worship at U.T. in the Campus Crusade meetings. Oh, he was so cute! But not cute enough, I guess, to motivate me to overcome the pain of learning awkward chords and the pain in my fingertips.

Then I continued guitar after that because I was forced to be the worship leader for the youth at a church at which was summer intern. Our college pastor (back when Hyde Park had one) told the education minister who was interviewing me that I played (which I only barely did) and when I knew that I HAD to lead worship at least once a week, I was suddenly motivated to practice.

I can't remember what my motivation was the third time I picked it up. I do remember that's when Nick and i dropped $200 on the guitar I now own and which has collected dust for several years.

But this time was purely out of a desire to finally work through the hard and unenjoyable part of learning a skill all the to the part where I actually played for enjoyment.

This was my motivation for picking up painting again as well.

I always was into drawing when I was a kid. And then one summer, I took a paint class. I used acrylics then. I had always wanted to learn because my grandmother on my father's side painted--and very well, I might add. But I only lasted for that summer.

Anyway, Carrie Allison said she was going to start a watercolor class and I said I'd be interested. She has since decided she's not going to do the class, but in the mean time, in preparing to become her student, I picked up a few instructional books to start playing around on my own and am already hooked! I'm only doing step by step paintings now, where I'm told exactly by someone else what to do and tends to me a more mechanical than creative exercise. But I know that once I learn the mechanics, I can start doing my own compositions. And I really enjoy painting, even when it's someone else deciding the subject matter.

Wow, I just suddenly got very sleepy. Well, good night!