Life is being broken and healed over and over again.
Each time we break God puts us back together more perfectly than the last time. Each time we break, we’re in pieces: we regrow: we’re changed . And then when we finally turn to Him, God grands us the gift of healing. Not long ago I was broken, just like I’ve been broken many times before. At age fourteen, healing was a foreign process to me. At that point I don’t even think I know that I was broken, I only know that I hurt inside.
For me healing started in art class. Art has always been a passion of mine, but that year showed me that by creating both beautiful and ugly things, I could heal. My journey started with an amazing art teacher named Mrs. Mimi Sekoya. I doubt she even remembers me however my heart will forever remember the impact she had. She was a tall, willowy woman; when you looked at her you could tell she was an art teacher. You knew from the way she dressed, talked, and the way her wedding ring was hand crafted, a design she and her husband worked on together and had handcrafted by an artist friend of theirs. She was patient, kind, and caring. Each project I worked on she pushed and pushed me to create something with meaning, with passion. At that time in my life I was dead set on everything being perfect. I remember working on one art project for 3 months. I would do the same thing over and over again. I would get to class, pull out every imaginable color pastel I could need, pull out the picture I was trying to recreate, and stare at the outline I drew on my paper. I couldn’t decide where to begin, what colors to use, and most of all I didn’t want to mess it up. I sat there for 3 weeks, making absolutely no progress. Until one day Mrs. Sekoya sat me down and told me something I didn’t want to hear. She said, “Miss Liz,” (as she liked to call me) “this project doesn’t have to be perfect, in fact in needs to be messy, show me your passion, let this pastel be an extension of who you are, that the next person who looks at this (the average observer), will look at this project and see the heart and the pieces of Liz in it.” Her words shook me. I desired perfection, and instead she was asking me to create and to simply let go. Letting go has been a constant theme throughout my life. Here is where I began the process. And so right there, that day, I let go. I remember starting on the tree trunk in my picture, using many different colors and shades of brown and black, and I filled in that tree with a passion, with a freedom I had never experienced before. It was passionate. I poured my soul into that picture, letting go of perfection, letting go of what I thought it should look like. And by the time I was done, it was something beautiful. It was colorful, bright, and most of all it had pieces of me woven into it. That one piece of art brought healing in and though my soul. And I’ve been addicted ever since. Art is my way of expressing myself, my way of finding a kind of freedom that not many others understand. My way of working through my many emotions, thoughts and feelings.
You see God gave us talents and passions for a reason. We’re supposed to use them to serve him. He gave us these gifts to help us get through life. For me art is truly what keeps me sane. God lets me paint and gives me healing in and through it. He uses art to speak to me, to show me what he’s saying to me. To heal my broken pieces. Each artwork brings healing and I leave more of my brokenness behind each time I choose the freedom of painting. At the end of my life I want God to have created a beautiful masterpiece from my life. I want him to look at the imperfect, messy, painting and say, well done my beautiful daughter.
The month of January has been one of transition. The men on our squad went trekking all over Nepal, while us woman all went to Kathmandu for a month of living in all female community. In that we changed teams, changed countries, and even temperatures! Nepal is a lot colder than Africa 🙂 and the transition has been rather hard on me. I fell so deeply in love with Rwanda, that I can’t ,no matter how hard I try, fall in love with this place. And that’s okay. In this season of change and brokenness Papa has helped me fall in love with Him even more, and he’s renewed my love of painting with a passion. I’ve created more here in Nepal than I ever have on the entire Race. That’s what reminded me of this story.
Sending love from Nepal
Xoxoxo
Liz
