I want to dedicate this blog to the women at Wildflower Home. It has been incredible to labor along side such magnificent women. You ladies taught me many things-how to farm, how to make shampoo, and most importantly how to support and encourage strong women as a strong woman myself. Thank you for allowing me to partner with you this month. 

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I've been filled with a little bit of....ickiness the last few weeks. I call it ickiness because I honestly don't know how to label this ugly feeling thats been circulating around my mind. Its feelings of frustration with some, it's allowing others to make me and my talents feel inferior, and it's a feeling of loneliness ad longing for the comforts of home. It's caused doubt in my mind, it's made me question what is right and what is wrong, and it's made me and the art I create for the Lord feel...cheap. As if the gift He'd given me was less than significant, and not enough. Its confusion, which I have allowed to grow into its full potential by believing the lies that ran laps inside of me. This feeling has left me in pieces...

But on Monday I was sitting with the Lord at Bella Goose, like I do every morning, and He gave me a picture. Glass. Stained glass, to be more precise.

Feb. 3, 2020

You turn my pieces into something glorious. Something that magnifies you. Glass. Stained glass, Lord. You take the sand- the pieces of my shortcomings- the shards of glass that were shattered because of my harsh human heart and you make them a glorious picture. And more than that, you saw it fit to place the picture you created in a space that isn't hidden by the sun. But instead, in a place that the sun constantly warms. In arrays of color and shapes, you want your light to flood through me and onto the objects in front of me. Whether that be the floor in front of me, lit to guide my steps, or the person in front of me, tinted in warm yellows and reds to be a reminded of the warmth of your love. 

I am stained by the blood of the lamb. I am stained glass- beautiful because I am one of a kind and cannot be remade. You have hand sculpted the art that you shine through. You took my broken pieces and made them into a picture. The pieces I gave to you can't be recreated by someone else, and neither can the love you gracefully give back to me in return. No one can take the shards I've given to you. And because I am made in your image I am beautiful on my own, but like stained glass I don't reach my full potential until holy light is poured through me. Until the purples that remind us of your highness, or the greens that symbolize new growth, or the red that reflects your love seep through to the other side of me, I haven't reached my full potential. 

So Lord, pour your light through me and allow your color to project off of your creation. Let me never forget that broken glass still reflects light. As Paul boasts in his weakness in 2 Corinthians 12:9, teach me to celebrate in my brokenness. Because ultimately it seems that in the moments that we are the most broken are the same moments that your light shines the brightest. You are in the brokenness, and you are making the pieces into a beautiful picture. 

Celebrate your brokenness friends, He's making it beautiful.

until next blog,

-j