#WIP: Returning

I never thought that this would be so hard.

Painting again.

In the last 40 days or so, I went through a time of transition, which was really painful. I felt like I was stripped down to my soul. Everything was laid bare. Just like when a storm hits the sea, churning up the sediments to the surface, the deeply entrenched lies, and crap hidden away in the sea bed of my soul floated to the top. . .

40 is an important number that signifies transition. It rained for 40 days and nights leading up to the flood, there were 40 days of mourning after Jacob died, for 40 years Israel wandered in the wilderness, and 40 days Jesus was tested and tried in the wilderness.

Honestly, it felt like I was in my own wilderness. Grace alone kept me from going under the tidal wave of change that surged over me day after day, churning things that were hidden deep inside, making me aware of crud that I didn't even know existed: lies that had gotten entrenched deep in my heart, weaknesses to which I was intentionally and unintentionally blind, bitter wounds stuffed inside prematurally, hurts that I had never acknowledged or grieved . . .

In the throws of all this, I lost my dream - my passion to explore worlds, and experiences through colour, my desire to paint.

Taking up a paint brush was hard for me. Suddenly the very thing I did intuitively, was the one thing I vehemently resisted.

But yesterday, I came to a point when I knew that to so harshly resist one of things that gave me life, was essentially self-sabotage.

Surrendering to the still small voice inside me, I picked out a canvas, the brushes, and the colours, and started to lay the pigments down. I had neither a preconceived idea, nor the expectation of seeing an idea come to life.

I just laid down colours, cos I felt that I had to.

The small voice challenged me to go beyond what I immediately felt: the resistance, the discomfort, the indifference; beyond what I could not see yet . . .

Here's what came out after working for two days on it. . .

I still don't know whether it's done. I don't even know what it is, let alone what to call it.

But this is what I do know: since I started work on this piece, and started writing about it here, I finally began to see clearly, the movements of change that had taken place in my life in the last 40 days.

Words are not sufficient to articulate what I experienced. And maybe that's the whole point the Spirit has been trying to make: sometimes, our words, the output of our reasoning capacity, does not do us justice when we try to make sense of what it means to be human.

I guess that old saying, a picture says a thousand words is more than a cliche.

I may not know what my current work in progress is about at the moment. Heck, I may not even get what this moment I'm living at right now is all about either! But maybe the point is to not always rationalize existence. Maybe the point is not to be mired in the paralysis of analysis.

Maybe the point is to accept what is. To be present. To know that through it all, there's a greater love sustaining me.

And this gives me the hope to pick up my paint brush again.

To dream once more.

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