Creative Intercession.

Ever since I lived in Arizona, my life shifted.

That's what happens when He allures you to the desert.

Arizona was a restoration place for my soul. I had an amazing group of soulmates there (some of which now live in Tennessee, too!), and I re-claimed a part of my life that had disappeared somewhere.

It was the creative part...the part that thrived on color, and curiosity, and the thrill of a good work of art.

My love for creativity never vanished, but the part of me that was creative as a lifestyle did.  I blame a lot of it on the pressures of having a "real" life, some of it on a lack of knowledge that I could actually be an artist as a career, and some more of it on a self-imposed expectation to perform in a certain way.  Sounds like a good time, doesn't it?

When I made it across the country to Sun Devil stadium, it was time to exorcise some demons! I needed full out deliverance from anxiety, boredom, and exhaustion. (It's funny how those can all exist at the same time, but they can!) With the help of my soulmates, I got back in touch with some of those inner parts, and I watched those gremlins run. 

Isn't it funny? All I needed to do was move toward who I was created to be, and life got better. Joy was more real. More tangible. I started to feel lighter. I began to metamorphasize...

Since that time in Arizona, I decided never to go backward. I wasn't going to live a status quo life; it was miserable. I took some time off from regular "working", and I started to re-connect with myself.  And with God.

And that's when life started to get really good...

I was engrossed in creativity that I had longed for but had never tried--and also some that I had given up and desperately missed.  It was a beautiful, chaotic hurricane.

I felt emotions that had been stuffed for years. I had pages of journal entries where I released years of confusion and joy and anger and sadness and passion (and cuss words).  And somehow, after two years of being in a desert, I moved to the ocean--the Alabama coast. It has the brightest of blue water, and whitest of soft sand.  And, still, another layer of gremlins released their grip.  I bathed in the sea salt and the aromas of rest. Of vacation. Of another layer of new-found freedom that was just waiting for my agreement.

Now, over five years later, I look back and see how I've ensued this pattern of desert to beach several more times.  Each layer exposing areas where I've held unbelief, or unresolved grief, or anger, or or or. God is so kind like that.  So many times we think that He is "teaching us a lesson" when bad things happen or when we are in a desert, but really He is just manuevering us to a place where we can see Him.  Because when we see Him, things change. Even bad things.

Sometimes I feel like I have the heart of an 80 year old. I look back at my short 30 years on planet Earth and have seen a Life unfold.  A real Life.  Some people have a mid-life crisis in their forties or fifties. For me, I was 24. It wasn't until I moved to the desert in the natural that I realized I'd been living in a spiritual desert for years...caught up in do's and don'ts, rights and wrongs, sacred and secular. And somehow, after a purging of all of these things that I thought I "should" be started to go away, the desert became one of my most favorite places. It was my place of release.


Because soon after the desert, I moved to the ocean.


The Alabama gulf coast is one of the sweet secrets of the United States. The ocean water cleansed my wounds, and the salty sand purified my walk.  No longer bound by the infections of bitterness and performance, He gave me the grace to start believing who He is in the midst of pain and the unknown.  And because of a resolve in my spirit to agree that He is in fact who He says He is, I was persuaded to say Yes to His ongoing invitation to understand just how wonderful "It is finished" actually is.

My road to get to this place has been creativity.  Turning a chaotic mess into something beautiful.  Partnering with God to make something extraordinary out of color and oil and movement and words. People have asked me how I find the time to pursue my creative passions while having a family to raise and a dog to clean up after.  My thought is, how do I not? If I don't, I die.  I go back to barrenness. With each step of creativity, a new layer of Life is birthed.  Creativity is how I pray.  It's how I wrestle with God.  It's how I sit in peace. It's how I nurture my spirit.  If I don't create, I cease to breathe.

Creativity is my gap-filler. It's not an end. He is. But it is my means to The End, and it is my overflow of The Beginning. He is both....the Alpha and the Omega, The Beginning and The End. The only God in whom Fullness is found.

And somehow in that shift of moving toward The End and overflowing from The Beginning, I experience Heaven. And I get the amazing privilege of bringing it to Earth. If we want to talk about purpose, we can find it here. I have found not one thing more satisfying. He is the Creator, and we have been made in His image. And no matter if we have seasons in the desert or at the ocean, we can find a Home in creating with Him.

As He created us in our mother's womb, all our days were ordained and written in His book. How precious are His thoughts toward us...(Psalm 139). 

What a beautiful Life we get to Live...

Happy Sabbath.