Gradual Progression & Meaningful Reflections

It is autumn again, and with it comes the start of a new school year and Rosh Hashana. Summer's closure meant closing up some projects I've been working on for a few years and putting to bed some ideas I've been percolating on so I could rest and meet the new year with anticipation.

I figured something out this year about my capacity with projects and the ebbs and flows that come naturally with my current day job as a teacher. I know that I accomplish nothing really in my own business until November, so I planned my year out last December to host this spot as a time for reading and rest after I burned through time and energy finishing three significant projects this summer. (Feel free to sign up for my newsletter to learn more about those.)

Coming up, I am focused on some thematic words with curiosity as to what they mean and how they will unfold. Healing prayer, safety, the table, and identity are some words. They join other words I've collected for the previous year that are still relevant: deeply rooted, first responder, and gather. 

I am profoundly reflective heading into Rosh Hashana (a Jewish holiday (though I am not Jewish) marking the start of the Jewish New Year). This holiday has become a helpful tool for me in planning out my year, my vacations, and my projects. As the holiday falls in September, the time for me to build this year's vision board is only a few weeks away. So, with this blog, I wanted to reflect on what I've been learning about life, God, and stories with gratitude.

While I was home this summer, I got a much-needed boost of vision and energy when I attended a church with a lady who was THE key to reshaping my life toward who I am today. I used to babysit her kids, and we attended because one of those kids was now a worship leader at that church. I have followed her life story through social media photos over the last few years. What I saw in the church that day was a room full of Gen Zers raising their hands and even posturing themselves on their faces as the Presence of God filled the room. With humor, the previous school year left me wondering if any of these kids were left in the world. I got a reminder of how the Lord moves in people and changes lives, and when that happens, they soften and become outwardly focused. They want to give away the very thing that has changed their life to other people.

I have lived such a miracle myself.

Since that church visit, I have been chasing down another curiosity about the legacy I inherited from that key individual that I have now passed on to others: missions. Going forward, I want to invest there. For now, my teaching job is its own mission field. It helped that I helped chaperone a trip to Nepal earlier in the year. Being in a foreign country and living where Jesus is the focus, the center, and the provision collects many stories. I have had to remind myself in transitioning from that life to the life I now have that the narratives do not stop. They just change pace. Now, the Lord is bringing back around the importance of being willing to be uncomfortable within the yeses we give him when we follow.

So I found myself listening to a previous week's sermon by that church in which my friend's daughter spoke and shared a little of what I suspected in her own journey of transformation. She shared about overcoming fear and finding her identity by listening to Christ with a voice filled with love. In her sermon, she mentioned another man's work teaching people how to overcome fear.

Upon listening to this man's story of working with the police and learning how to hear God in his own work, I remembered something else that is valuable to me. Every time I have stepped out into something I feel God has directed me towards, I have collected a story. I shared with my student's parents that this listening and responding skill has influenced my business, classroom, artwork, and relationships. These are the stories I crave when hard times come. They feed my soul and help me remember the truth of who God is.

It is hard to hold onto the lie of "not enough" when you witness God work inside the words and directions He gives you. 

To look at the journey God has taken me on with art, there are a few key things you must know first about how it all started. I'll let you ascribe to the voice of some of these things their critic.

1.) I was told by a professor in college that I didn't have what it took to be an artist, so I quit the department. 

2.) After a year of floundering, I told the Lord I wanted to study art and that if He would get me back into the department, I would use my gift to help others. 

3.) I learned how God would teach me to do that in Missions training. I started to give artwork away to people. I learned that art could deeply touch people, like a personal message. I knew that my art was created from a revelation God gave me about my own identity. I learned that if I left it on the shelf, eventually, He would bring me the person that needed that same message. 

4.) An advisor confronted me about trying to make a profit off selling God's words. A lot of my work ended up encouraging the people who bought it for the season they were in. What was right and wrong about that? It brought me to a place of asking God for the picture and to not always tell me what things meant.

5.) I was told indirectly that the people in the art department I ran wasn't weren't real artists and the art produced was not real art. Yet, I paid for multiple plane tickets by selling my art in private showings. 

6.) I started a blog called "Art with a Heart for Healing," which eventually led to my business name and pen name, MKHart. 

In combating the lies, labels, and pigeonholing of my artistic career, I was given the grace to work in markets where I was living at the time and sell my art through backdoor means. Because of these, I can claim international status with my sales. This was an encouragement that I was more than just a teacher and more than just an encourager. Opportunities also came to take workshops where professional artists would teach art as healing and identity reflection. I picked up several beginning steps and tools that have now become what I use in my HartSync sessions. 

At one such market, I was selling paintings I had done in worship services. Talk about a dry day! While many people looked at my art, only one person bought from me. He walked past my painting multiple times before leaving to get cash because I was the one vendor without Square. When he accepted my piece, I learned he worked in business, giving advice to other people, and that while my work was abstract, it held an emotion that he wanted his clients to have when they came to his office. (That piece, when I painted it, was about peace and breakthrough, trusting the Lord for the step-by-step leading.) I remember thinking that day that it was no small thing for one of my paintings to be hung in the office of a business that would touch other companies. I learned the value of finding the one person many times over with my work. 

In today's world, my Business Sync session clients are women influencing other women, businesses, and families. Is it too simple to say that where you invest, you reap later? 

"I remind myself of all that You've done. And the life I have because of Your Son."

In closing, I heartily agree with the Bible and its advice to not despise slow beginnings. I remind myself that building is faithful; day by day, little moves like an ant builds a nest. I remind myself that what is ahead will be more of that type of work. Yet, in the same way that I started doing markets with cash and now sell my art online, there are layers and upgrades to how we build as we mature. 

I think about one of the words I've reflected on this year, "deeply rooted," and remember another thing: with each new measure of maturity comes a layer of truth and deepening in the identity. This last year, I grew settled and confident in ways I cannot fully express that have had a transformational impact. 

So, for the next month, while things transition one year to the next, I am waiting to see what presents itself with the doors I've opened and the projects I've birthed. I'm stockpiling rest and feasting on other people's "I listened to God, and this happened" tales. 

It has been a beautiful life thus far, so I look forward without fear and with much excitement. This is bound to be a good year.