The Big Picture: On Motherhood and Being and Artist

I’ve been inspired to start writing more from my own experiences, and sharing about my walk with the Lord through various seasons he leads me through, so here begins a series of more personal blogs!

I’m in the thick of motherhood now - a 2 year old and 5 month old. They bring me absolute joy and absolute opportunity for growth in virtue.

I’ve always felt called to stay home with our children, despite being a dreamer with big goals and vision for my creative calling, which has been a thread throughout my life and displayed itself in different ways during different seasons.

Up until nearly a year ago I was balancing a work-from-home part-time admin missionary job while staying home with our oldest daughter. But when we were pregnant with our 2nd I knew I’d need something with more flexible hours, and that would flow from my primary role as wife and mother, not compete with it for time.

I sensed it was time to step back into creating more. But at the same time I knew the arrival of a newborn wasn’t going to make that easy.

I spent a few months before her arrival getting the business side of things prepped - getting my website updated and functional, attempting to hone my brand and discern my audience and approach, learning about business and marketing strategies.

And I remember the grasping anticipation I felt leading up to her birth - how would I make time for art? Where would I find the space? How would it look? Would I do it with the kids around? Would I need to work during the night?

I spent a few hours one afternoon googling these questions - how to balance motherhood and being an artist. BAD IDEA. Though I’m sure there are great resources on this topic, I didn’t find them. What I found instead were articles and blogs from the covid days when kids were home from school and mothers resentfully found themselves needing to cut back their art time to take care of their kids and school them, bemoaning the hold on their careers, and setting their gaze on hopefully better days ahead when they would have their stolen time back. I found articles on mothers simply putting a hold on art altogether when kids were young.

I certainly ended up more discouraged than inspired. There had to be a better mindset out there. I believe in fully in embracing your season of life - if we’re finding ourselves simply waiting for better days, we’ll be missing out on the grace of the present. I was excited to parent my young children, and at the same time I felt called to step into creativity. So I resigned to patient waiting - I knew the grace would only be found in the present, not the time leading up to it.

And what can I say now that I’m here?

I think the single biggest lesson I’ve (begun!) to learn is to have a mind for the big picture. I’m in it for the long game. I’ve realized I need to discern and stay faithful to the process. God leads one step at a time, he doesn’t typically plop all the answers in your lap. You are inspired in an area, and you stick to it, through the thicks and thins of challenges that pop up or moments of discouragement or dryness.

To be completely honest I’ve never had more discouragement surrounding my art than this season of trying to press into it wholeheartedly. My husband’s encouraged me that that’s probably a sign that I’m doing something right, because its the important things in our lives that are met with the most resistance.

And I know its true because I’m learning so much about myself and my walk with God in the midst of it, if nothing else I know he’s at work in me, and that knowledge is enough to keep pressing in.

So what do I do?

I make space for the important things - I take care of my children and consider what they need for their health and holiness - I shape our day to allow space for their formation. The two year old needs to experience basic prayer, work, play and leisure, discipline. We’re structuring our days to be a foundation through which God will work in her life through the circumstances of her day. She might have a crabby day and throw a whining fit every five minutes. Well, God’s will for me in that moment is to be a channel of his own patient love for her, gently correct and redirect her. It may not look like the perfect day on the outside, but its a day of what she apparently needed, (and I need those days once and a while too, it keeps me from making an idol out of a day that went ‘smoothly’.)

I try to make space to do art because God’s asked me to. (He’s not asked me to succeed - an important distinguisher!) But I try to be faithful to applying myself, and I experiment with different approaches. One day, around when the baby was 2 months and just starting to get into a nap routine, I’d had a couple days in a row where both the babe’s naps lined up for an hour and a half. So today, I thought, I’ll get out the paints and work during that time slot. The time of day arrived, I got them both napping. I took out the paints and starting mixing colors. (Now I work in acrylics. I use mediums to extend the drying times, but even so they dry within an hour, so if I don’t use them then and there its a waste of paint.) The moment of truth - the colors were mixed. Then, ‘whaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!’, our baby is a shreiker, there’s no mistaking that she’s awake, and awake for a while. Ugh! This moment and many other’s where my plans are overturned have sent me into temporary spirals - Why do I try? Maybe I’ve hear God wrong and I’m not supposed to be doing art. Will I ever have predictability in my life again?

I’ve realized I will encounter these spirals because I’m human. But I’ve also realized they will pass, and in the moment I can simply counter them with what I know - God’s not asking me to be successful, he’s asking me to be faithful. This is a particular season of unpredictability, but that will pass with time.

And so I adjust - for the time being, still not attempting to paint during nap time anymore. I only do the computer side of business during those times since I can drop it in an instant. I choose 2 evenings a week where I’ll paint after the kids are in bed. (Sometimes the baby cries for hours and I don’t get the work in, but in the long game over the course of several weeks, art gets made!). Recently my mom so kindly offered to watch them for a 4 hour chunk once a week so I can paint during the daytime (a gamechanger - the daylight brings out such subtlety of colors you simply can’t see at night.)

Since having a newborn, I’ve completed 5 originals (one for every month of her life), and am beginning to find more time in a given day since routines are beginning to show signs of life again. I consider that a win - the fruit of faithfulness in the long run.

I’m waiting for breakthrough in other areas, and I catch myself often entering into a striving mentality. I’m not meeting my sales goals, I must be doing something wrong. Maybe I haven’t found my ideal client, maybe I need to completely change the approach of my brand. Maybe I need to invest in a different marketing strategy.

When I enter that mentality, I make decisions quickly and change them often. Time is wasted. I don’t ever realize the fruits of my efforts because I didn’t stick it out long enough. I recently heard someone say that successful people make decisions slowly and rarely change them. There is much emotionalism connected to perceived success in your work. My theory is that it’s rooted in pride and fear. I want to be perceived as successful, and I want to know I’m doing the right thing (because I can see it working). I begin striving and trying new things sporadically because I fear God’s abandoned me in whatever area I thought I discerned, and I try to take control and get a quick perceivable fix.

But when all things pass and we stand in eternity - what will be the measure of our success? Will it be the success we perceived on earth? I believe it will be much deeper. We are the final work of art that will shine as a mirror of the glory of God. Our character, the extent to which our lives were grafted to Christ’s and we became like him, will be the living witness of our level of faithfulness.

And so I must stay faithful to the little things, cut the crap out of my life, get focused on what matters and press into the moment. Keep my gaze on Christ and do it for love of him and love of others. The success will multiply because that’s what God’s grace does - I can expect that in faith. It may or may not be perceivable on this side of life, but I’ll know it all one day.

My encouragement to you - stay faithful and press into what you discern in prayer, God’s leading you on a journey. You won’t be perfect and that’s ok, in his great love he shepherds us through all our weaknesses, leading us to where we rely on him most fully.

Healing the Eyes of the Heart: Developing Sacramental Vision

‘We Do Not See Rightly’

My all-time favorite movie is a somewhat obscure Netflix original kid’s movie, ‘The Little Prince’, based off the kid’s book written in 1943 in French by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. In such simple, poetic words and imagery it conveys profound truths; every time I watch it I’m struck by new layers of meaning.

One of the lines reads “And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.”

Although knowledge of Saint-Exupéry’s personal devotion or adherence to a specific faith is somewhat vague, his line is pretty spot on with a Catholic understanding of spiritual theology and sacramentality.

The Theology of the Body Institute recently published a book, God is Beauty: A Retreat on the Gospel and Art, by Karol Wojtyla. It recovers an original retreat for artists given by Wojtyla before he became Pope John Paul II, coupled with reflections and commentary on the connections between the themes of beauty and the Theology of the Body.

In it, Christopher West expounds on the teachings expressed by Wojtyla: that due to original sin, we do not see rightly. We are blinded to the divine plan for human life. (God is Beauty: A Retreat on the Gospel and Art, Karol Wojtyla, P. 75)

The Eyes of the Heart

Our blindness comes from a certain disconnect between what we perceive in our minds and the core of our being, our ‘heart’, wherein God dwells as a result of baptism. Instead of hearing the voice of God in our hearts, we hear what we perceive on a surface level. Instead of seeing and understanding with the eyes of faith, we see from whatever framework has formed in our minds due to our circumstances. Channels of the brain are formed in accordance with what we see, hear, and repeat as true to ourselves. We build up a system of beliefs based on our ‘vision’ of how the world is. Habitually we will return to these patterns of thought even though we may intellectually understand our faulty thinking. For example I may understand on a knowledge level that God is with me in all things, yet in a moment of hardship I return to a pattern of thinking “God isn’t with me and I must find my own way out of my circumstance.”

To this the scriptures say “be transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Rom. 12:2). And this renewal must take place from the inside out, not by our own strength, not by willing ourselves to see rightly. It must be by a humble return to God, a vulnerability before him, allowing him to broaden and deepen our vision as he illumines the truth in the midst of our circumstances.

Channels of Grace

The Catechism of the Catholic Church gives this definition of grace: “Grace is a participation in the life of God” (CCC. 1997).

This means that avenues of grace are places we actually experience the life of God: Prayer, the Sacraments, and sacramentals. These are given to us as sure places we can encounter him, and EXPERIENCE his life. And what does this encounter really do? Well, in a word, everything! An encounter with God is an encounter with truth itself, beauty itself, goodness itself. In beholding God we behold a true vision, we ‘see rightly’. And the more continually we return to this true vision, the more our minds are aligned to it, our sight is healed, and we are free to operate from our core wherein God dwells without our brain’s patterns holding us captive. This is when outward transformation happens (over time of course, and by the grace of God)- a person takes on the life of Christ and becomes a living icon. The person’s will becomes one with Christ’s will and the Father’s will. He becomes Christ’s vessel of grace, a new living witness, a sacramental, a ‘sign’ of what the life of God looks like. This is the calling for each of us, an invitation to sanctity, total transformation from the inside out.

I could ramble about this for a while, I mean it’s just jaw-dropping when you stop and think about it, nothing less than the point of our existence! But in the interest of succinct-ness I’ll save the rambles for other blogs and move to one last point:

Surrounding ourselves in truth, beauty, goodness

In this journey of transformation, what is there to do but surround ourselves by grace?! Christ is the Good Shephard who will lead us by the hand, for he knows our hearts better than we know ourselves. He will unfold the layers over our hearts steadily and in perfect timing, with just the right circumstances tailored to our needs. We must simply turn to him, seek him. He is always there, always waiting, knocking, ready for that encounter.

And how shall we turn to him? RUN to sources of grace. Even when we don’t see the results we want immediately we can always trust God is at work in us, and isn’t it enough to be in his presence? The clearest sources of grace are prayer and the sacraments. Pray with infallible truth, sit with the scriptures, read and learn about the traditions of the Church.

Secondly there are millions of channels of grace all around us in ‘sacramentals’. All things bearing truth, beauty, and goodness - signs of the eternal all around us, stamped into creation. If we really want to cooperate with the truth that grace presents to us, we must actively counter the unhelpful patterns of thinking in our minds - the direct result of the information we feed ourselves through our senses. If we’re surrounded by negativity, ugliness, lies or even partial-truths, these will feed into our thought patterns and become the tools of the enemy in a war over our perception of reality. Naturally, surrounding ourselves with good things provides access points for God to reach us, and through the discipline of what we allow to enter our minds we will develop what Christopher West refers to as ‘sacramental vision’ (God is Beauty: A Retreat on the Gospel and Art, Karol Wojtyla, P. 190), where by God’s grace we begin to perceive his presence all around us. He “Opens the eyes of the blind!” (Psalm 146:8).

Contrasts

The duller the grays, the brighter the highlights appear, so much more vivid and impactful. Not the brightly painted canvas, but the one painted gray with a burst of color, will strike the viewer as a burst of light.

The darker the night, the more radiant the day.

The colder the winter, the more you relish that Springtime melt.

The more painful an experience of suffering, the more fully you appreciate the peace and healing that follows.

Perhaps so too the more of our life that is colored dull by hardship makes the masterpiece that is the whole of our life shine when colored by the brightness of faith. There is no saint who does not suffer.

Embracing the Call of an Artist

Hello all! I’m in a new season of life, recently ending 4 years of work with SPO as an admin missionary, and now entering a season of full-time motherhood.

During this new season I’m also cultivating a small art business and ministry, which in some ways feels like I’m stepping into my “dream job”, even if in just a part-time capacity. Here on this website, and particularly as of the writing of this blog, you’ll find the humble beginnings of an artist trying to make sense of many dreams and visions and discern what is meant to be embraced and cultivated in this particular season.

I’ve wanted this moment for a long time, and in the couple years leading up to this transition and still now as I begin to enter in, I’ve done a lot of reflecting on the dichotomy between the general understanding of a “dream job”, even in the Christian sense of being called to “do” or “be” something with one’s life, and another understanding which I’ve come to consider “living out of a calling”. In the previous sense, you arrive one day at your “calling” and start living out of it at that moment, when all the pieces line up, and after much hard work leading up to it. That’s how I used to understand my calling as an artist, and honestly how I feel tempted to think about it all the time. In that mindset, one can imagine being fulfilled by one’s work, and in the moment they don’t feel satisfied they can buckle down and work hard, telling themselves they just haven’t “arrived” yet.

BUT, allow me to share with you a taste of the other sense, and how it comes with absolute freedom to embrace your calling, your unique design and the talents God’s given you, while going through every season of life in its good time, fulfilled whether or not in any season the “dream” comes to full fruition.

(side note - I’m using the words “dream” and “call” here somewhat interchangeably, which comes with the presumption that the “dream” has been submitted and discerned. Our deepest desires and dreams will be fulfilled in God (though most certainly in a deeper and more fulfilling way than we’ve dared to hope/are capable of comprehending - for which reason we must consider our dreams shallow and ask God to reveal the deeper need and desire we have.) Because of the shallowness, we ought not expect every hope and desire we have be answered in the initial way we thought of it, but with much prayer and aligning our hearts with the promises of God, we can expect our desires and dreams to be refined into real tangible things that are noble of pursuit. At this stage, a “call” in your life may well present itself as a dream or desire, because your deepest desire is for the Lord. What he invites you too will ignite your heart and be life-giving, a stepping stone on your journey towards him.)

But back to the main point -

In the second sense, “living out of a calling”, your call unfolds throughout your life, taking on different forms, drawing out different talents and skills, challenging you and growing you in different ways. Perhaps at one point you’ll find yourself embodying the call really obviously or practically - as in a career surrounding it. At other times you may have very little time to put whatever it is into practice, but it still captivates your heart and mind and is an important part of you, and you live it out in many small ways. The focus becomes not the call, but the pursuit of God and the transformation of your life into his image. That is the universal calling, to become the ‘Imago Dei’. In different seasons of my life I’ve seen parts of my personality grow and fade, different skills brought to the forefront, different lessons learned, different weaknesses exposed. I look back on each season with gratitude, not because each season has been enjoyable. Rather I look back with a deeper joy and sense of peace because I can see God's hand in each circumstance and receive it as a gift.

Life is the journey by which God makes of us a masterpiece, transforming us into his own image. And he places us right where we need to be for that transformation to happen, its simply up to us to embrace that time and the grace he gives in it.

It’s been most freeing to “live out of my calling”. You see, I have a theory that we sometimes take a look at our desires and talents and associate them with a very specific way of life so that those things can be explicitly lived out. For myself, I realized in college that certain passions of mine, such as beauty’s evangelistic potential, coupled with my talent for drawing and painting, along with other personality traits that make me vision-driven and entrepreneurial, all just seemed to point to an art career. Once I realized that, it was hard to separate the things that make me uniquely me from my idea of how that could practically play out. But by submitting that practical vision of an art career, and allowing God to place me in different circumstances in my life, I’ve been able to see how he continually both pours into me through those areas of my life, and gives me places to pour out through them, what a gift! By trusting him with our circumstances we’ll find we have many opportunities where we can pour out in way that gives life to the world and reciprocally fills us with the life of God.

I’m eager for this new season, and grateful for the practical ways I can embrace the desire to be an artist. But I’m even more grateful in advance for whatever work he’s up to in my life, and through my life. It all leads me back to a sense of deep wonder at the ways of God and his love for us. In all circumstances then, let us give thanks! (1 Thess. 5:18).