Acceptance
Offering - Watercolor and Ink
Tonight I realized that I am beginning the long journey back to being an artist. A lot has happened since I started this blog a number of years ago. A patient tried to kill me in the psychiatric hospital I was working in, which led me to a lengthy decline into a period of depression that eventually cost me my position. After being on leave, I was allowed to return to work at another site, and eventually was given a position as a therapist. But I had stopped making art altogether, and only in the past few months have I been able to draw in the presence of God again. I still cannot create the kinds of images like I used to, but the small sketchy paintings I am able to create with watercolor seem to speak to people. So I am learning to accept a number of things:
1.) I am only afraid of the things I keep a secret. I was afraid to tell people that I had lost my job, afraid to tell people that I struggled with depression and trauma, and afraid to say that I was now intensely fearful of being hurt again. But the good thing is, that I am learning to say and paint these things… and I have for the most part (apart from a few notable exceptions) been accepted and loved in spite of these fears.
2.) I am learning to accept that I cannot be who I thought I was … and I really was not who I thought I was anyway. I thought I could handle everything: violence, intense emotional tsunamis, threats, screaming, and seeing bloody people who had hurt themselves. I found that I could not, and that the prolonged exposure to these things was eating away at my soul. I was not strong in the sense that nothing bothered me. I am learning that strength is actually acknowledging, and being knowledgeable of, my weaknesses – because I can step to the side of those pits I used to fall into again and again. I am not taking as many pitfalls by realizing I can’t do anything.
3.) I can be an artist in many ways, even the small ways. I am learning that these little paintings, these sketches painted with colored teardrops, are able to move hearts like my large paintings formerly did. This I take as an unexpected form of grace – a true blessing.
I have fallen apart, but what God is making from these shards of my former self is something I am grateful for so many days. I hurt a lot yet, but I am becoming.
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