LIVE BEHIND YOUR BEAUTY

We were all created beautiful, you, me, all of us!  God does not make mistakes.  If you define yourself using defeating words, then you are only orchestrating your own self-doom.  Speaking to yourself using edifying words is not a swell-headed thing to do.  Before we can start to love others, we must love ourselves first. 

The first thing we need to do is to banish what negative things others say about us.  If we don’t, we are allowing those people, who don’t know one iota of who we really are, the power to persuade us that we are not worthy.  More than likely, the negative things people say about us is a reflection of their own self-loathe.  But because they want to create a smokescreen for their shortcomings, they convince themselves that the ugly things they see about them reflect on others.  It stems from the truth about themselves they may not want to address so they shift the focus on the other person.

I myself have come to the realization that it’s hard enough to deal with my own shortcomings to even care about what other people say I am.  It created a certain truth in me to make it seem that I don’t really care what other people say I am because I know the truth.  But they’re right… I don’t.  God knows my heart and that is pretty much all that matters to me.  I just continue on the path that God prepared for me because it ultimately leads straight back to Him.  For that I am grateful.

Do you get in the way of your own beauty?  If the answer is yes, then you get behind it.  Lead a life guided by your heart full of love, not so much with your mind because the mind doesn’t beat for the life that is in you.  It’s your heart that does.  The mind only contributes reasonable intelligence to lead the heart where it belongs. 

In life we are like butterflies.  A caterpillar starts out kinda ugly, that’s us in the flesh.  When we get with the love of God, we become enveloped and nurtured in his love.  That’s the cocoon.  When we become rich in His glory, he releases us into this beautiful, graceful creature called a butterfly.  The butterfly lands on every beautiful flower and compliments  it with beauty and that is what God wants us to do, go to each person and share our beauty to enhance and bring out the beauty in others!

Until my next rant… LOVE ONE ANOTHER!

About the art:

I started out with the reverse stencil butterfly I used for another project, to use and not waste the ink.  Watch the video below.

Then my Koi watercolor paints came a day early, yay!!! The colors are so vibrant and moves like butter.  I’m so happy about that!  Then I was practicing flowers, so I originally wanted to fill the page with flowers.  But then this face came to me and so I drew her.  Once I saw her, I figured, ok, why not add other flowers and a caterpillar? That’s just how my mind works, I guess the butterfly inspired me.  Ergo, my random life.  Done in a way to show I move to the beat of my own drum.  And do you know why I do?  Because I have one life, guided daily by God, so who can go wrong?  I’m still human, and maybe fall on my face more often than others, but jeez, I dust myself and move on!

For more inspirational and unique art journaling techniques, join my Art Journaling with Inspiration Class starting May 1st all the way through July 31st! http://www.anamariefox.com/art-journaling-with-inspiration.html

BREATHE IT ALL IN, LOVE IT ALL OUT

(Part of the Beautymark series)

Doesn't it feel like you are walking on air, smelling the flowers, listening to the birds singing when things are going your way?  You are happy.  You are inspired, you are alright.  Right?

But when trials and tribulations cross your path, you kind of fall out of kilter, unable to think, teeter-tottering on sanity and insanity.  You lose focus, balance, but most dangerously, you lose faith.

There is a saying, pray even on good days, just to thank God for His many blessings.  But sometimes, when problems happen, we forget that God wants you to draw even closer to Him. We forget that God can guide us to a path of righteousness as long as you put your feet on His line and walk it.

When you breathe in anything and everything this crazy world throws at you and instead of spewing anger, hate, resentment, etc. you breathe love out and bless every little negative event in your life with the notion that God is right behind you and He's got your back.  God will certainly dole out more grace to you to carry you through. 

I know that as humans we instantly say, well, it's easier said than done.  YES!  I know that!  I face those monsters in my life as well and sometimes, because I'm only human, I do forget.  It is not until I remind myself of God's precious promises in His word, and knowing deep in my heart that he cannot lie, I am absolved to His truth!  There are countless other things that God is, and this is just one of them.  So as long as I surrender myself to His will and guidance, how can I ever go astray?  How about you?

Until my next rant.... LOVE ONE ANOTHER!

LEARN TO LOVE

I’m going to be harsh about this subject because I have encountered too many of these
experiences  in my lifetime, and it’s time to tell it like it is.  I apologize in advance if my message today offends you.  However, my purpose and intent is to make create awareness on this issue.  I hope my message today imparts what people like me have thought about thoroughly  but were otherwise afraid to put a voice behind it.

There are people in this world who have been used to mistreatment all their lives.  As children, we are very vulnerable to the treatment from the adults (parents specifically) whether good or bad.  I am sure I don’t have to expound on the “good” treatment because we all know those results are good.  So, based on my own experience, I can only talk about those who have been treated badly.

There are three types of people that result from these.  One type become violent, aloof, angry, and abusive naturally mimicking how they were treated.  The second one turn out 180 degrees and overcompensate good treatment of their spouse and/or children because they want to put a stop on the repetition of history to end the abuse.  The third and most dangerous one is the person who becomes passive aggressive. 

The passive aggressor is incapable of responding to love tit for tat because they have not allowed themselves, as adults, to re-learn the tools necessary to accept such emotion.  They may have been raised in a household of fundamentalists, or people who are more eager to please others via the illusion of perfection, rather than becoming pleasing to the scrutiny in the eyes of the Almighty God a.k.a hypocrites.  They create a facade of righteousness but yet unable to show the love and compassion for others.  They push their emotions down and compact them, issues swept under the proverbial rug just to create an illusion of order in their lives.  They neither refuse nor deny that there is something wrong.  They often push their spouses or children to complete frustration and exhaustion because they don’t know how to deal with or reciprocate the love they are being given.  But worst of all, they crave chaos and strife by communicating their perceived victimization while purposely neglecting to address the issue at hand and seek solutions, so they can sock it away as ammunition to passive aggressively attack at a later date.  It is small wonder that these people cannot hold a relationship.  When a passive aggressor communicates, it is often vague or discombobulated.  There is a purpose for that.  The purpose is because a passive aggressor often cannot accept failure or defeat, so when the truth comes to light, a passive aggressor’s mistakes can then be explained away, and if you’re not paying attention, you will be convinced that such a mistake was justified.

If you are this person, I urge you to dig deep into yourself and admit it and desire to change your ways.   Go out and get godly counseling.  Learn to identify and accept love in your life as it is but a waste to not know and feel what true LOVE really feels like.  If you can’t even feel the love that is offered to you by a fellow human being that you can see, what more the love of the Father that is limitless and unconditional?  As a loved person, throughout my life, I am able to identify true love, seeing it through the eyes of someone who loves me and I tell you, if you haven’t seen it, you are missing out on the magnificence of such emotion.  Life is too short to live in strife.  Great energy is wasted feeding into schemes to cause strife but worse of all, those people who give you love, and you turn away could be lost forever.

Until my next rant…. LOVE one another.

GOD KNOWS

Immersed in this confusion served up by the devil on a silver platter, feels like being served with a banana split when all I want is to do is lose 10 pounds.  Knowing it is so bad for me but yet I get sucked into its wiles laden with fleshly desires.  Take your mind out of the gutter, I mean temptations of the flesh at its very simplistic form.  This free will is for the birds.  I, for one, wished that I was born with the will of God and not my own will.  Couldn’t I have been given a choice when old enough to make one?  Automatically?  Why do I have to be subjected to the same screwed up choices Adam and Eve made?  Well, there really isn’t much I can do now but continue my battle against the devil’s lies and deceit.  At times it feels like I’m losing but the promises of God is what really keeps me afloat.

If you think it is easy, think again.  I scoff at the face of anyone who believes, who truly believes in their hearts that it is an easy task.  Well, you get the picture.  I won’t rant about it much more.

So how do we, yes you and me, achieve victory over this ever present fight when it seems that there is no light at the end of that tunnel?  How do we stand with God in victory?  After all, we are mere humans whose powers are limited.

Well, for one, God knows what we are up against.  He knows the difficulty that we are faced day in and day out.  When it seems that we are alone dealing with it, He never leaves our side especially in those times when He knows we need Him the most.  God has been identified and described as LOVE.  His unending love for us does make Him the very essence of LOVE.  Imagine a human king with all his power and glory being admired by everyone, came down from his throne, approached you, singled you out and gave you his crown and said that from that time on, his powers are yours, his strength and his glory are now yours to do whatever you want with it.  How would you, as a mere peasant, feel at this moment?  Maybe special, emotional, appreciative, honored, like you won the lottery, and felt so much love for him that you would vow to use your now special powers to pay it forward?  Well then you’ve answered your own wonderings, haven’t you?

So the next time you feel low, unloved, and unappreciated, why not ask for God’s presence to manifest for you?  Well, Anamarie, what you’re saying is easier said than done because it is hard for you to visualize an invisible being to love you.  That’s just it, though.  Jesus said to His apostle “You believe because you have seen me, blessed is he who hasn’t seen but has believed” John 20:29.  Now that, my friend, is the majesty that is God!  Imagine a paradise where there is nothing but love, no pain or suffering, just the treasures of God enjoyed by all of them who love Him.  I mean, seriously?  Do you feel deserving of all of these? As sinful as we are?  But our love cannot be measured or even compared with God’s love because His is far greater than ours that there is no way to understand it with our feeble minds.  Would it hurt for us to seek Him when we are down?  I believe it would only help.  So seek Him today, don’t waste another minute.  I’m a professional seeker but yet I still have days when I get sidetracked, thus, still a work in progress.  No one is immune, until, of course, we no longer live in the flesh.  I seek that day, everyday.

Till my next rant…. LOVE ONE ANOTHER!