update up to Resurrection Sunday
wow. life has been kind of amazing. i left my job for a new title. we bought a house, got a baby, and the adventures of life still continues. its amazing when God brings the harvest time in a whirlwind, its like overwhelming. i have never ever and will never ever will be able to explain the pleasures of parentdome. wow. it deepens the image of grace to me, it makes me feel like i am a keeper of the most precious secret, its just an infinite high. like one night i found myself exhausted from not sleeping for three days straight and my ears were ringing with this crying that felt like it would go on forever and NOTHING was working!! and all of a sudden i felt this rush of peace, like: dude! enjoy this...its a live recording of a being that God Himself has shaped, molded, detailed, and refined to fit into YOUR arms....and to break any exhaustion is knowing the reason WHY you are really doing what you are doing! to nurture a soul God intrusted into YOUR hands. man. humbled. i've never dreamt so hard for someone. i mean i dreamt and prayed about my soulmate way before i ever met my husband. but this. man....i dream and then i pray and then i pray again over Seth's salvation, his destiny in Christ, and the man he will become. its so exciting. its like seeing one of Bob Ross' painting sessions...like oOoow....what will it turn into? lol.
other than our new addition, i have traded in my job to homeschool kai, be a stay home mom, and paint! greatest combo EVER. most of the time i do not know what i am doing, but all of the time i try to make it fun. homeschooling kai has started as working up a good routine for us: breakfast, feeding cats, watering our garden, reading, homeschooling curriculum, playing, napping, singing educational/spiritual songs and then playing some more. the teacher part is really basic, we do things we can do through out the whole day. thanks to my mother in law who gave me pointers: toddlers are still in the state of exploration and to converse with them in EVERYTHING you do will be enough. so the days we learn about shapes, we go around the house looking for shapes, while we cook together we talk about shapes, when we play together its about shapes. and so on and so forth about numbers, letters, and colors.
the stay home mom part is kinda fun, i get to play house and cook do laundry, decorate, pick up, and greet everyone with a parade of kiddos. we make it a big deal when "a-nu" or "wa-gi" gets home. i've been doing lots of baking!! because i suck at it and they say practice makes perfect so i've baked breads, brownies, cookies, dinner rolls, cinnamon buns, and cakes. most of them were edible, some of them were just bird food. laundry is a work out, with two flight of stairs, two kiddos doing messy activities, and a husband who uses two different towels in one day whenever he showers forgetting he already used one in the morning that's already dried OFF, ugh, we do lots of laundry. i think i'm going to draw up a clothes line on our nicer days to help us dry the clothes. i've been turning our basement into a gypsy campsite with all the laundry i try to air dry on top our storage boxes. oh life.
and the painting part. i have not painted for almost two years now. the last time i painted was with my girlfriends in my bedroom/studio in the cleveland apartment. summer 2011. so i've finally finished a painting i started back then just the other day. and i've started on a new one! i'm so excited. i have to have atleast 6 paintings going on at the same time or i lose my momentum. i guess i just can't wait for it to dry so i need to get my ideas still flowing onto another piece of canvas. i got a commission piece request in, so there's another piece i get to start. i follow artists on instagram that really inspire me, like cbabi and some photographers i cannot name per say. just people painting/shooting with a cause. you don't know how much you've missed something until you get it back again. that's been painting for me. i get into a rush of excitement because God would give me a quick image of what i want to see on my canvas and it would be gone. and to bring it back and to be able to put into the colors i want...its like a big puzzle to piece together. i'm too much of aesthetic painter and i can really overkill things when i try to perfect it so i try to keep it ambiguous, that saves me from being stuck on a piece and overdoing my paintings til i forget what the image was to begin with.
God in my life has been amazing. Its been one for the seasons of revelation in my life. He seems to speak best to me in admits chaos. Usually I'm too busy to hear or see it, so it gets lost. But because I ask for ears to hear and heart to see, its revealed. Like you don't see things until you look for it kinda season. Its been so refreshing though. Its given me so much peace about things I know would keep me up for nights if it happened years prior. And i think He does that on purpose because He wants us to weather the storms and so we can appreciate and truly take in the calm. I don't think i would appreciate anytime of calm if I did not have pure chaos in my life. A revelation God has been slowly revealing to me is the mind of fear. My husband striked something big and deep when he said "you and your sister live with a lot of fear in your life". that small statement just broke into a huge lesson God has been teaching me about fear. I don't know if its the way we were raised or what. But i remember my mom was particularly cautious with us. not like nurturing kind of cautious but like a tigerous over her cubs kind of cautious. like something precious had been torn from her and so therefore she guards kinda of cautious. and it dawned on me: she lost her first child. and so i tried to put myself in her place and i finally get a glimpse of the heart of her fear which fueled ours.
and motherhood. is quite a mixed of emotions of great love and great fear. now that i study more of GOd's love, i doubt one can be without the other. God doesn't stomp out emotion and feelings, He is the creator of these things. The more in love i become of my son and nephew, the more fear of losing them heightens. fear can really overcome you and devour the truth that God loves them more. but when you fear ONLY the Lord, you believe that it is because of love all things happen. you realize that you are only a steward of what God has LOAN you, that these children can be taken by HIS hand in a blink of an eye and you need to be okay with that because they are HIS for the taking. I think parenthood challenges me to love with an open hand.
parenthood also makes me want to be more sacrificial, like i'd rather take a bullet for my nephew/son than have any harm done to them. and it makes me wonder what kind of self control God had in Him to ALLOW His one and only son to be abused, battered, and killed that unjustly. i get angry just thinking about some kid pushing off kai from the swing he was already on. wow. deepens grace so much more for me. these are just revelations, now to bring them into practice. Lord give me strength.
