Feeling renewed before it actually happens! See yourself as you really are!
My Rising Spirit
A Painting Description with Poetry
As always you are free to interpret this piece however you choose or are led to understand it.
These are simply my own thoughts which I feel inspired to share.
My own interpretations change as I revisit with pieces as time goes on, but these are my initial thoughts at the time of creation.
Oh how beautiful is it is;
Redemption,
The reviving of the soul.
If anything gives me hope,
Gives me comfort,
It is that I will not be abandoned
To that deep, dark place.
I know that help is on The Way,
I know that I will be drawn up.
Risen anew.
Pushed up by a Water,
A Life Force,
That is so much greater than I.
So much greater than I,
Can understand.
With about as many questions as the layers of the earth,
A deep feeling heart sinking deeper and deeper into the rocks and soil of the soul.
Waiting with eager expectation.
What will surface,
Before I reach the core of the earth?
The core of my being.
Where to begin? So many thoughts went into this painting, or came out of it, I’m not sure which inspires which. I guess it really began with a desire to paint “The depth of the deepest heart” a poetic phrase that popped into my head with the meaning of a deep feeling heart, a heart that really feels for others or feels deeply in all things, like my own heart does. The picture began forming and moving in my mind as a sad girl, digging into her feelings as they dig back into her, she sinks deeper and deeper down into the layers of the earth and all its dirt; its challenging-to-sift-through rocks.
Then, like a divine download, the heart struck a spring of water buried deep in the earth and I saw her rising up, her heart being pushed back to her as if she had lost it and it needed to be returned.
Sometimes when you hit rock bottom, it just seems like you’ll stay there forever, like it’s never going to end. Unfortunately it couldn’t feel further from hitting a spring of water that's reviving you. Sometimes we stay at rock bottom for a long time and then realize we aren’t at the bottom after all, as things get worse. You’re just on this continual sinking journey, a spiral of all things you never wanted to experience, going down, reeling & spinning in stuck-like feelings.
It’s easy to see the hope when you can see the whole picture, how The Water, The Help, is actually there and in the end everything turns out alright. But in the moment when you can’t see what happens in the future, when you doubt if any water is there at all, there is no hope & no ticket out. That is a really scary place. It takes a LOT of courage to honor that place! A lot of strength to believe in your own resilience before there’s any proof! A lot of practice to see the beauty in that kind of pain.
The lesson I see coming through the strongest is that without that pain, the strength gained from rising out of it would not be integrated into our lives. Without feeling those intense and overwhelming emotions the girl would not have had the healing breakthrough that she did. Although I am a firm believer in growth without pain and wisdom with its lessons of change being taught in joyous ways, I understand the place pain has in healing. Oftentimes what has hurt us in the past cannot be completely healed without examining those scarred places and exposing the truth of what happened in the light of current life experience and a more wise perspective that comes with time and age.
I have come to appreciate and even be thankful for the pain I have faced and what still comes my way. It is definitely not always a constant gratitude, but the freedom on the other side is enough to give you hope for the next trial you face and enough to inspire gratitude for what you went through.
But it’s never an instant healing, even though it looks so quick the way the water shoots up with force and momentum! To some extent, it does feel quick, there’s a great sense of relief when you first strike the water, it feels like everything is finally falling into place; everything you've been learning along the way has been building upon itself and it’s just a bit clearer now! But it’s never instant. Sometimes you backslide, or you feel ok, but not as good as you wanna feel.
It is a circle, you're not just healed all of a sudden, it's a constant digging deep. Being well and then not being well and being well and then not being well, going back and forth from sadness to happiness again and again. It's exhausting and you don't really even know who you are sometimes, or where you are; where you’re headed. Sometimes the good feelings are tainted by fear of sliding back to where you used to be. It is challenging to see that place of healing when you're the dirt girl. It is only once you come through it that you can see that place of peace. Or is it?
What if we could see the healing before it happened? Maybe that would be enough to jump-start it. What if we believed the water was there before we actually found it? Would that be enough hope to push through? What if we believed we had the capacity to feel the clarity, the rising, the worship; to feel revived in happiness & joy, in peace and calmness before we actually felt that way?
It’s not an easy thing to see or feel the healing when the picture is played out inside of time, you can’t see what is happening in the future or how you get there. Yet everything is already happening outside of time and so even in your darkest moments, you are at the same time revived and healed. It’s all in perception, in the way of seeing. It's a complicated path to be in that place of sadness, I know! Challenging to see what to do next and how to find clarity. It is really hard to believe that you're healed when you're still there in the layers of the past, it's hard to believe that you are the blue water girl who's made it and found the water, found help, found comfort. But the picture is playing out here all at once, all at the same time. This circle has played out a thousand times in your life already, all it takes is the eyes to see! The eyes to see how brave and strong you are, how resilient and bold you have been in the past, to really see yourself for who you really are and who you have been in the big picture of things; who you are being called to become. The heart that feels so deeply, believe me, has enough strength to go on!
Giving ourselves the time and patience to heal is so important, we must rise up slowly from one bad place to the next, till maybe it’s not quite as bad and it gets a little ok or we feel indifferent. Slowly coming up, being drawn up by a Strength you can’t understand, to a little better and then a little better. Finally to a place of acceptance, gratitude and worship! And then the cycle begins again, except this time you’re moving on to learn new lessons and you have all the tools from the lessons of the past, to face the new ones with more strength!
“Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep your word.”~Psalm 119:67
“It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.” ~Psalm 119:71