Amanda's Musings

For a while now I’ve not felt myself. As you may have picked up over the last few months I’ve been under a bit of stress. Some of the outcome of this has been mental and some physical and I cannot deny, some of it spiritual. Damage was done, some may be permanent at least in the physical area but I’ve started climbing back up the mountain and dealing with the mental and spiritual damage. Of course I’m not totally there yet, thats going to take a long time and as I trust that God is the great physician I know healing will happen. Forgiveness will happen too and I do think its starting, slowly.

One of the main stresses over these last six months was that my hubby didn’t have a job. It was tough watching him as he struggled with many things but last week the Lord gave him a job that can only be from him. He is now a school Chaplain at my daughter’s school. Its most exciting really as there is no denying that this was completely God directed. As the stress of unemployment was lifted so was that ‘wilderness wandering’ feeling for both of us but I was left with the physical results of the last year. Since he started his new job I’ve found myself to be obsessing even more over symptoms, as if my brain is scrambling to catch up to where my hubby is. Still struggling physically makes me feel as if I’m dragging the stresses with me into this new phase of our lives. I am making distinctive and purposeful moves to resolve these issues.

One of the moves I’m making involves figuring out how to reconnect with my creativity. That was one of the first things to be effected during the period of chronic stress and without it I don’t feel like myself. Sure, I’ve still done a tiny bit but mostly it was mechanical, to distract me and keep my hands busy. My hands were involved but my mind was not.

I did a bit of a search on the net for ideas on creativity inspiration techniques and found two very helpful articles. This is one and this is the other. This morning I made moves to step towards some of these suggestions. The first thing I did was get my whiteboard down off the wall and erase it clean. Then I wrote out many of the tips from the first article and hung it on my wall, next to my art area.

I then scoured the list and chose one area to work on, combining the idea of having a topic and using a mind map (from the second article). I thought about the words that have followed me throughout the last 12 months and started:

Trust was the first word that came to mind. I blogged about how this was the word I returned from our trip over east with earlier this year so it was an easy choice. I have also done one using the word ‘new’, this seemed appropriate to starting fresh and also works in perfectly with the way that the Lord drew me to consider the butterfly while we were away (as mentioned in the same post). Its a start anyway and from it I’m hoping to keep on working until some ideas for artwork come through.

Revelation 21:5
“And the one sitting on the throne said, “Look, I am making everything new!” And then he said to me, “Write this down, for what I tell you is trustworthy and true.”