Make Your Life a Work of Art

Henri, you speak the truth.

My oldest daughter gets frustrated when creating art. The watercolors aren’t laying on the paper right; the paint is too think; it isn’t working out the way she envisioned. I tell her that art is not perfect. It’s not meant to be. Art school taught me this. She will not listen to any of it! She struggles with the limited medium; she struggles with her need to be perfect in whatever art she is doing.

Art is a lot like life. It’s messy, it’s never perfect, and it’s limited depending on how we view ourselves, which is at the very essence our “medium”. If we view ourselves as “not good enough” or “not ready” for the next step we will fight the ourselves, the medium. And, our art will be left unfinished.

Do you get the picture I am painting here?

Another great artist was Vincent Van Gogh. Do you think Van Gogh was happy with his masterpiece “Starry Night”? Did you know it was painted from memory of his nightly view outside of his sanitarium room window at Saint-Rémy-de-Provence? I don’t know about you, but if I was in an Asylum, experiencing incapacitating panic attacks, I would be feeling pretty down about myself. I don’t know if I would think I could create something so beautiful. But he did. He didn’t let a hospital room confine, or define, him. He found inspiration right where he was in that moment of his life. Outside his window looking at the heavens.

It does me good to do what’s difficult, ” Van Gogh wrote, “That doesn’t stop me having a tremendous need for, shall I say the word—for religion—so I go outside at night to paint the stars.”

So, do we wait for the “perfect time” to make art, or do we do it now, while we have time? While we are still alive?

I just finished reading the book “A Million Little Ways” by Emily P. Freeman, and I have to tell you it is riddled with a green highlighter marker! Words, ideas that speak to me. Words I want to remember. Words of affirmation, and an overwhelming nodding, yes, yes, and yes!

Just because you can’t fully live your life the way you so long to live it doesn’t mean you don’t fully believe it’s possible with all your heart. And it doesn’t mean you are forbidden to share what you’re learning unless you are living it perfectly.

Christ is in you and wants to come out through you in a million little ways − through your strength and also your weakness, your abilities and also your lack.

I call it art, someone else calls it rubbish. So what?

Call it what you will. God calls us his poem. And the job of the poem is to inspire. To sing. To express the full spectrum of the human experience − both the bright hope that comes with victory and the profound loss that accompanies defeat.

We must make art, even in our weakness. If we don’t, we are denying ourselves ourselves. In turn, we will deny everyone else ourselves as well. ~excerpt: A Million Little Ways

Art makes a difference. You make a difference.

Your art will not look like your friend’s art. It will be different. It will be all you.

Maybe you don’t know what your art is yet. That’s okay. Keep searching, asking, praying.

By the way, Van Gogh suggested in letters to his brother, Theo that he was not all too happy with his Starry Night painting. It just goes to show you that sometimes we may think we are not making art when, in fact, we are making a masterpiece!

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You can visit Emily’s inspirational blog at Chatting at the Sky. The books “A Million Little Ways” and “Grace for the Good Girl” written by Emily are available everywhere! If you have read “A Million Little Ways” I’d love to hear how it has inspired you to make your life a work of art. And if you haven’t read it…I recommend it!

Linking up today at Holley Gerth, Coffee for Your Heart. Please stop by and read inspiring women making the world happier right where they are.