Art Year.

This year, I vowed to make more art and I’ve been focusing on hand lettering recently. I’m obviously no pro. I’m still learning; and my boyfriend being a Visual Effects Artist (slash writer slash Cartoonist slash all around creative guy) has been outright supportive. For the longest time, he’s been urging me to learn Adobe Illustrator but never really got to try it out until last night; And gaaaah awesome schmawesome! Everything was just cleaner and easier there!

Anyway, that image you see above is some sort of collaboration between him and me. So that’s basically, my handwriting digitized, colored and textured in Illustrator and Photoshop (home is just where the heart is!) For a first, I’m quite happy.

Let me just close by saying, I am blessed to have a boyfriend who, well, appreciates my art (I actually still cringe at the idea of calling it art but he says I should claim it) and encourages me to create more. For some reason, I was swept off my feet as he detailed last night what he observes as my design style. For a person like me who’s not always good at figuring out things, hearing it was a loving confirmation and a definite confidence booster.

So there, here’s to more art and confidence this 2014!

Do not neglect the gift you have, which was given you by prophecy when the council of elders laid their hands on you. -1 Timothy 4:14

Make You Feel My Love

Make You Feel My Love (Adele)

When the rain

Is blowing in your face

And the whole world

Is on your case

I could offer you

A warm embrace

To make you feel my love

When the evening shadows

And the stars appear

And there is no one there

To dry your tears

I could hold you

For a million years

To make you feel my love

I know you

Haven’t made

Your mind up yet

But I would never

Do you wrong

I’ve known it

From the moment

That we met

No doubt in my mind

Where you belong

I’d go hungry

I’d go black and blue and

I’d go crawling

Down the avenue

You Know there’s nothing

That I wouldn’t do

To make you feel my love

The storms are raging

On the rolling sea

And on the highway of regret

The winds of change

Are blowing wild and free

You ain’t seen nothing

Like me yet

I could make you happy

Make your dreams come true

Nothing that I wouldn’t do

Go to the ends

Of the Earth for you

To make you feel my love, To make you feel my love

If I heard this song in the summer of 2009, I would have banged my head on the wall so hard or pounded my chest intensely. Every word would have pierced through and I would have probably shouted, “I LOVE YOU THIS FREAKING MUCH. WHY DON’T YOU SEE IT?” a gazillion times in my head.

You see, I got my heart broken in the year 2009. Wait, broken might even be too light a word to describe. My heart was shattered; pounced into tiny million bits and then scattered all over. Picking the pieces and putting them together just seemed too impossible a feat.

He was the man of my dreams. I have waited for him for a long time. When he came, my happiness was beyond measure. Finally. Finally, somebody to feel my love, no, somebody to SHOWER with my love. You see, people have told me that I have a big heart,that my heart was just always out there–ready to care, ready to rescue. And I took pride in that. So, I thought, with a heart like this, who would run away?

He ran away. He was told to run away. God, with His uncanny but loving logic, told him to so that we would both remember.

He made us, me especially, remember that it is not about our (my) love and how we (i) love but HIS love and how HE loves; That actually, it is HIS love that enables us to love (1 John 4:19). You see, we forgot. I forgot. We trusted in OUR love. We forgot that it is HIS love that is to trust.

I could hold you for a million years.

I’d go hungry; I’d go black and blue and I’d go crawling down the avenue. You Know there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do.

I could make you happy make your dreams come true. Nothing that I wouldn’t do go to the ends of the earth for you.

Back in those days, I could have sworn to the man of my dreams with those lines. I really, really thought I could love that much. Unfortunately, given my capacity, they are mere metaphors.

When my heart was shattered, Somebody came to the rescue and made me feel His love–Somebody whose capacity does not limit the above lines to mere figures of speech; Someone who could LITERALLY love me for a million years; go hungry, go black and blue and go crawling down the avenue; could make me happy and make my dreams come true; GO TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH for me. He even died and bore the cross for me!

He put my tiny broken pieces and glued them all together and polished them as if new–as if never damaged.

The Lord made me feel HIS love and believe me, nothing could ever compare–not even come a centimeter close.

The LORD your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing. –Zephaniah 3:17

Day 6

I felt as if I only brisked through some books so I decided to read the bible from page 1 again.

Last night, I began with the beginning, Genesis Chapter 1, and these questions popped in my head: Why did God put man on earth only on the 6th day? Why not earlier so he can watch Him create?

And just as if I was having a conversation over coffee with God, responses to my questions flew in swiftly. If God had put man on earth on the 1st day, there would be light but the earth would be bare. If on the 2nd day, the sky and water would be there but there would be no food. If on the 3rd day, there would be plants but no light in the night sky. If on the 4th day, the sun, moon and stars would be there but none will be flying or swimming. If on the 5th day, there would be fish and birds but none walking and moving with man on land.

On the 6th day, God created living creatures on land and soon after, formed and sent man. You see, God chose to bring man there when everything else was already in it. He brought man when the earth was complete, when the earth was full. God used the 5 whole days for Him to prepare man and to prepare man’s paradise.

Today, God may have promised you paradise but you are not quite there yet. You’ve been waiting for days, months and years and you feel like you couldn’t really watch God because you don’t actually see Him do anything. Worry not. Discouraged, don’t you be.

God is working. Maybe He doesn’t want you watching because He wants you to be in total awe when He brings you there. He is preparing you. He is preparing your paradise. Be patient and give Him His 5 whole days (the equivalent of that to our days, I can’t really say) . God promised you paradise, not just any place. He takes His time because He wants to give you the best.