Realizations of a real relationship

I've realized today, crying in my way home from work that I don't believe God has my best interest in mind. 

If I believed He did I wouldn't have such a hard time with working teaching and caring for other kids whilst mine is at daycare. I would be focusing on how I could best be His tool for building the kingdom. Instead I find myself horribly selfish and I can not see a way out except prayer and tears. 

Why is it so hard to explain why and how we feel? Good or bad, it's a human right of passage it seems to try to relate to one another's experience. When doing this we also trudge through the muck of unutterable feelings that refuse to find words of proper definition. Without these words and hopefully sentences- communication can't take place ruining the loneliness of feeling like the last idiot on earth. 

For clarification and truth: He does care and have the best for me if I can learn to trust Him fully with my heart. God doesn't deal in partial commitment. However God always loves partial people. Thank you God. 

What am I doing?

This blog started off with big goals in mind and shifted as I found more of my identity in being a mom rather than an artist with a day job- and let's not kid ourselves artist around the world dye in day jobs. 

All along I should have found my identity in Christ and blogged because I wanted to write and not be worried about the rest but somewhere inside me I'm still hoping I can make my money with a blog someday and stay at home with my baby girl while she is young. I want to be a housewife in a day and age when that larger than life job is considered to be beneath my gender age and station by so many. So many but me. 

I'm going back to to why I should have started this blog and I may make it private. No offense. I am in need of catching on fire again. I hope for being a housewife. Life changes and I must change too. 

Remenants of a summer

These pictures are from the historic a society of Greensburg, IN and the pictures of the square grand are specifically for you http://victoriaelizabethbarnes.com so I hope you enjoy.

This is a great example of murini work in a glass paperweight from the 1930s. My husband David and I had a field day explaining how it was made to two older ladies running the joint. 

We even had a moment that felt like the Antiques Road Show from pbs where we turned it over and revealed clues to its origin and date because of the word 'China' scrawled on the bottom. Thanks to our trusty googling skills and glass history we were able to inform them just how wonderful and somewhat worthless it was. The experience was priceless. 

This is front of a church nearby. 

It's amazing to me how fast this summer has flown by. I feel a great since of dread and a pinch of excitement as I return tomorrow to another school year- my second as an Art teacher. 

Dear God let it go more smoothly. 

Leaded glass from a second story building in the courthouse square. 

Summer Vacation

This may read like that of a fourth graders first semester paper written in the loathed first week of school but I'm hoping I have better stories and perhaps better spelling. 

Obviously my run on sentences are on par. 

There are two things necessary for a family road trip with a ten month old to succeed. Those two things are sleep and kindness. Humor is a close third but without at least one of the former humor cannot exist. 

I feel that as I grow up I can never be too kind. I feel that used to be kinder and some of it drifted away. I know the old saying is there ever present in a different age but we should be able to use it today as well. Props to you if you do genuinely.

  "You're too kind.." It said sincerely is something of sweet southren beauty. 

We have seen a lot of Midwest and had many laughs so far. Best of all of course has been the food- my recommendations are for Joplin, Mo is The Red Onion, Cuba, Mo is at the Bakery and Deli on Main Street, and Twiggs in Chesterfield, Mo. If you must only visit one go to The Red Oinion and have the soup and order a slice of pie for me- I was too full from my steak dinner to press on into delicious deserts.  

Nightmares and Pinterest

Anytime I have a bad nightmare I pray.

I pray a lot. 

I have a lot of bad nightmares.

I pray a lot. 

They used to be night terrors but God has dilivered me thus far and I beloved he will the rest if the way if I would fill myself up with him only. 

However I still have lots of nightmares and after I'm done praying away the horrid dreams such as last nights.... Giant hermit crab attacking me and my family and my foot being pinched off by the big claw and eaten whilst my baby girl is saved by my mom and my husband shoots the crab and rescues what is left of me. 

Anyways....after such dreams I pray and after prayer sometimes comes sleep- most times....

But then there are the other times when every foul and evil thing that can spring from the corners of my mind ends up surfacing and sleep is gone- wakeful stupid reality of no sleep sets in and I surf the Pinterest. 

What do you do when you can't sleep? 

What's left out....

Many of the design blogs I follow hold pristine pictures of homes manicured and  manufactured by sole individuals creative minds and limited budgets. Or at that is at least what they would have you believe.  

The very idea of a cost efficient renovation is hilarious to me. And don't get me started on how photoshopped and lighted those pictures are of people's homes. Please come to my door! Bahhh. If only... 

Be gone spirit of discontent! 

It's money you are spending on something you deem valuable. If you want: treat yo' self! If you can't afford it: cue that song- ....love the one your with.....

My husband and I are raising our daughter, now just past nine months old, and are on phase two of the renovations we have planed for our 1954 ranch "Birdhouse". 

I've been struggling with this blog like most people do with their first blog to find my rhythm, pace and focused topic of choice. It's a blog about me and I am at heart an Christian artist. However I'm not in the hotshop these days. I'm in the classroom teaching elementary art, breastfeeding, or renovating. My latest personal artistic endeavor was dyeing my hair rose gold. 

All this to say I think I've found what it is I wish to blather on about here to this great internet void. 

Everything. Well aren't you surprised. 

No... Really, everything they don't tell you in those blogs. The helpful stuff. Not the how too if this beam support that joist or the  this paint color with that fabric texture.  

How to not kill your husband or yourself when plan A, B or C - X doesn't work out....

How to feel pretty when your hair is dyed Not rose gold.....

How to not kill your mom when she's just trying to love and help you.....  

Ya know that kind of stuff. 

To be continued....

Today...

Today doesn't feel like a gift. Today is a gift.

Today didn't feel nice. Today was nice. 

I didn't feel good after a visit. Yet the visit was a good one. 

So many times things don't feel like they should. Things are not what they seem. They are what they are and I must step back and breathe before I feel, breathe before I cry, breathe before I react. 

I love my husband and my daughter. I love my immediate and extended family - sometimes I feel sad no matter what. I can and will remember that God is good always, even when I'm seeing things not as they are but feeling them as they seem.

 I will follow Him and not just feel better but be better as well.