moves me every time.  i come back to it every time i need inspiration.  that song!  i just love it!

these videos are my favorite thing to make!  i absolutely love being able to show you all these people who are so special to me, and the unique ways they bring beauty to the world and to celebrate the great JOY it is to be ALIVE!

this one is documenting becca on her twenty-first birthday, and my idea behind it is to show you how she creates and how she loves and how she is always inviting into adventure!  i dearly love becca and thank God for the gift of twenty-one years of her being on this earth, creating and loving like she does!






** & please keep in mind that the focus in these videos that i've been making is on celebration, love and light and laughter, which i think requires one to recognize going in that this is only one part of life, the sunny side, but that life and friendships are not perfect and hard things happen too!  i just never want to give you all a false impression of how life is, so please keep that in mind! **

i've just been thinking about God & His beauty a lot today, so this is the product of those thoughts and revelations about who i am as a created being, made in the image of a Creator.

my hope is that, in some way, you might be inspired by this and find yourself creating something in whatever way it is that you create, and through your creating you might find the ultimate Creator.

inspired by psalm 104

"So often I thank Jesus for enjoying beauty.  How much more lovely is it to serve someone who likes and creates beautiful things?  I was humbled to realize that if He is the Creator of all we see, then beauty originates from who He is.  He is beauty.  He is light.  He is art.  He is color.  We serve a God who makes everything of worth eternal.  When He is passionate about something, He doesn’t hold back.  He made our souls eternal, our relationship with Him eternal, and beauty eternal."                   -a post i stumbled upon

this quote really got to me because i simply couldn't agree more.  praise God for beauty!

my prayer for the day is that we would see God as a beautiful one... that we would be constantly surprised by His beauty throughout the day, and that we would have eyes extra open, aware, and sensitive to the ways that He is beautiful and has filled our lives to the brim with it all around!  just too many beautiful people and food and sunsets and colors and sounds and little glimpses of Him to let them go unnoticed.


& ohhh i love that He's that kind of God.

so God, show us Your beauty.

You are everything good, You are everything beautiful, You are everything, You're everything...

Open my lips, Lord,
and my mouth will declare your praise.
You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart
you, God, will not despise.
Psalm 51:15-17

tonight, i painted watercolor on canvas for intervarsity large group.
painting is so worshipful for me and is such an expression of love towards my Father, i am incapable of describing just how much joy it brings me and how much closer i feel to God when i do it..

but painting in front of other people is a whole nutha ball game and i always have the idea that if i am ever going to paint in front of people, i need to do it from this place of overflowing.. like i need to feel God so close that from that, the art is just an expression of that outpouring and the awareness of His presence that i feel.

...only that wasn't the case tonight.  throughout today i didn't sense that my heart was particularly in sync with God's, and tonight even while i painted, i didn't sense Him being with me.  not that He wasn't, but i guess i just felt pretty dry.  i was pretty discouraged about this and was thinking, honestly, how dare i paint from such a place of lacking?
when i told my friend, Justin, about this afterwards, he pointed me to the verses above and made me aware of the fact that if i was coming from a place of emptiness today, God is even more desiring of my inadequate offering.  i couldn't even believe it.

geez, the more i walk with God, the more i am learning how much He is desiring of me to come just exactly as i am... messy, broken, dry, and all. 
what the heck??  no other God...

friends,
it would mean the world if you would watch this video that i got to create with my dear, and very talented, friend, becca.  this was a JOY.  click here: [thankfulness]
we really hope it blesses you and that wherever you are, you are able to pause, take a deep breath, and embrace the Creator's goodness.

Every once in a while, and more often than that if I really allowed myself to think about it, I experience this deep desire to CREATE... art.  But actually this is the most frustrating feeling in the world because I absolutely have not been able to quench it because I have absolutely no idea what to create...

So I blog.  I journal and draw.  I use Pinterest.  I take pictures.  I make cards...
My nice mom and dad have always been very gracious in offering old picture frames, utensils, and other of my crazy artistic requests throughout this process of figuring out what to create,
but still this deep thirst to CREATE a piece of artwork that is deeply impactful and meaningful goes on..

Maybe, just maybe this desire reflects an even deeper one, for Jesus.  Like many other areas of my life that can only be quenched by Him.
I was made for Him and I think He put this in me because He wants me to find Him through it.

One day, He'll reveal what it is I will create.  Til then...

Sweet dreams, dear friends.  I don't know why these beautiful little ceramic clips get me as much as they do, but I have found myself repeating this little video over and over.  Truly one of the most beautiful things; I just love it so much!

Done by a beautiful person, too, Mariah Harrison!  I certainly am a fan of that girl (:
http://vimeo.com/64200859

This is the song I wanna have in my head when I fall asleep, too.  Oh, Sleeping at Last, your music moves me.

p.s. Here's Mariah's website if you want to see other talented works: (:
http://www.mariahmpls.com/