Sunday, March 23, 2014

Embracing The Process





It began on Saturday. 

Huge snowflakes cascading from the sky, leisurely covering the ground, one delicate layer at a time. Just the day before, spring had arrived with 70 degree weather that made fat robins fly in and begin gathering material for their nest. Actually I don't know when they flew in, but I did see them being happy on Friday. The snow continued to fall as the hours ticked by and temperatures sank to single digits. 

Sunday morning brought the unveiling, of a Masterpiece of pure wonder.

Ice crystals hung in thick layers, like a mask over the rising sun. Frozen moisture clung to every exposed surface to become a stunning display of spiky frost art. 

The lake near us, looked like pink sea glass. Trees were as unique as snowflakes, each with a clear glaze of icicles and frost. My entire world, was an open-air cathedral, all a display of His splendor. 

This picture I posted above, may not win any awards, but it has no filters and was snapped from my phone, in a moving vehicle, while passing over the river bridge. It was crazy to do, but I was glad to capture any of the wonder, from steam rising off the water around trees still bare from winter. 

You just have to marvel at wonder when it presents itself.  And if you can capture some of it to hold on to for later, when wonder is not quite as easy to see, well it's a bonus.

That's how it's been for weeks now. Kind of hard . Really hard to see the wonder. It's not the big things that usually knock me down, but the three thousand, little-big things that have been chipping away at my every day. It's all the micro-things, layered and stacked, that can sneak up and steal our joy. The unexpected phone calls, the three annoying e-mails, the traffic ticket that I clearly deserved, nights of only a few hours of sleep, the first cold in months and the old dog passing away.  

But the quickest way to lift out of any slump, is just to praise Jesus.


It's something I've learned through deep trials and great times of blessing. Just to praise Him. He deserves it and praise has a way of turning my heart and face, right side up. 

I'm always learning, stretching, and wrestling, to walk in a way that is going to reflect His light, even when it seems dark. It's like this long, strange process. Change is always involved and rarely easy.

Last year I wrote about some changes I felt were coming this way. What happened to the last three years since I first began the process to get my blog up and running in the first place? And now I want to go and change it already. Actually, it was three decades ago, while driving a back country road in the green Buick I fondly named the "Ship," that I remember asking the Lord if I could someday write for Him. 

I didn't even know what that meant or what I was asking Him for.

And if I step back further in time, there was the History Essay contest my mom insisted that I sit at the kitchen table and scribe out words in my girly handwriting. That paper earned me second place somewhere. I have no idea what it even said. The subject matter didn't move my soul. There was another paper published that I wrote in eighth grade and a poem found, that I scribbled out, when my heart was hurt at a very young age. 

When my mom passed away suddenly, three years ago, I made it my job to scan in every picture I could find of her. Unexpectedly, I found pictures of her, before marriage and children, as part of the newspaper staff and images captured of her sitting at typewriters. I had never once stopped to think that my mom may have been a writer, who never had an outlet to write.

This blog and my writing, they are a long, strange process too. A good process, but ever changing. This space causes me to continually be learning, stretching, and wrestling with how to be reflect God's glory. 

I've had some things stirring around in how to rework this space, but it's not an easy thing. There are platforms, themes, colors, and fonts to choose. Logos, banners, and buttons, plus social media, favicons and tag lines.  There is an ocean of designers and in the center of it all you have to figure out what would most simply and deeply reflect who I am in the whole-wide-web of chatter.

I had some help.

Well, a lot of help. My daughter the photographer , (her website here) she prayed about it for me too.  And as a creative who is always creating, she dreamed of where to take pictures. She honestly felt like the Lord showed her this place, near my home, where she had never taken pictures before. And she felt like He assured her there would be a sunset. 


Well the sun was setting, but it was shrouded by dark clouds. We tried some things that she had been dreaming up, because her form of creating one thousand words, is her pictures. And then it was like the clouds rolled back and the most stunning sunset ever began to unfurl. It even had everything from hues of blue to flaming orange. God plainly showed off His grandeur that evening. And the wild thing about it all, was that the very clouds we thought were hampering the process, were actually a gift. They brought the blue tones that we needed to capture the art Amy was trying to make.


That will teach us all day long. The rolling dark clouds of life, can actually be part of the gift we have been waiting for.





Yeah. God was definitely showing off.


Well her pictures all turned out stunning and inspired a lot of the rest of my blog, as well as a few surprises that are still in the developing stages.

The blog designer is Rita. (check her out here?) She is sweet, fast and amazing. It helps to be a mind-reader if you are going to work creatively with people like me. She seems to have what it takes.

I love it all. My favorite color is blue, the sunset had blue and my bird is blue.

The bird was a surprise addition that kind of makes the whole thing for me. My mom loved and collected blue birds. She preferred the chubby little blue birds, but I think she would love that my space here, has a sweet reminder of my writing roots. After all she had a love for words and writing long before I was able to embraced mine.

And I guess that every blog is supposed to have "one thing" that you write about. Since I desire that Jesus be at the center of all I do, I decided it would be appropriate to change my tag line with the redesign.

It's pretty simple really. What I do, is write stories, for God's glory.

It seems, God has been pleased to direct the process of each detail, one half-step at a time, for this new home on the web. He stirred the beginnings, showed my daughter the perfect location on the lake for a photo, and provided the blue sunset. He connected me with Rita out of all the amazing designers out there and helped her cast the vision onto a tangible tapestry.


He revealed His glory so I could display a little of it here as I write on this blog.

He does that on every level of our lives and the lives around us if we will allow Him to.

I'm just thankful to embrace the process.

I hope you will make yourself at home.

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© Rhonda Quaney