Hiking In Grace & Capturing My View

The Chase

09.25.15

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Kyle and Kelsey Kupecky have written a book called The Chase; Trusting God With Your Happily Ever After. Kyle is formerly of the Christian band Anthem Lights and Kelsey is the daughter of Christian author Karen Kingsbury. They met and fell in love and let God write their love story that continues on in their marriage today. My oldest daughter is a huge fan of both of them.

I had signed up to review the book, published by Revell, however my daughter pre-ordered it on her own. They both arrived at the same time and she finished it before I did.

Actually, she finished it in ONE DAY.

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Who better to review a book than a young lady who is part of the demographic that the book is aimed at?

So without further ado let me introduce, my oldest daughter, Cait.

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Give her a warm welcome in the comments below!

One year ago I was surfing the web (Instagram to be more specific) when I came across a post from one of my favorite music artists about how he and his wife were going to write a book. Needless to say, I was extremely excited. Two of my role models were writing a book! I didn’t even know the topic and I still couldn’t wait. Some time went by and I nearly forgot that this event was happening. Life became complicated as I was wrapping up my high school career and registering for college. Then they announced the topic and it couldn’t have come at a more providential time. The topic? Letting God write your “happily ever after”. You see, I have this “problem.” I’ve never dated anyone. (I know, I know at my age that is NOT a problem. Fifteen year old me couldn’t see that yet.) I couldn’t wait for it to be released. I just knew that this book was going to be life changing.

I was right.

This book covers so many topics about guys and relationships that I have been struggling with and they are presented in a clear, understandable, and godly way. Their first topic, and one that was repeated throughout the book was that our first priority should be chasing after God. God is the only one who knows our deepest secrets and our greatest desires. He is the lover of our soul. Once we are chasing after Him and Him alone he will bring someone along side us so that we can chase God together. Or something like that. The point is, we must chase God first. Otherwise all of this is pointless. (No pun intended.)

Of course they also covered topics about dating and how to know if a guy or relationship is worth it. One example being standards. I’ve felt for a long time that maybe the reason I’m still single is that my standards are too high. Surely there can not be a guy out there that meets every quality I want. Kelsey covered that in a section entitled “The List.” After sharing a relatable story about her own list making attempts she says to us:

“Never think that your list is too long or that your standards are too high. Keep adding to that list. And never ever for one second think, My list is too unrealistic, or, This guy that I’ve created on paper isn’t out there. God knows, and His timing is perfect.”

Another thing I’ve received flak for from my friends is letting the guy come after me. Why shouldn’t I text him first? Why shouldn’t the girl ask the guy out? Kyle and Kelsey cover that extensively throughout the book but most specifically in the chapter “Call me Maybe.” A whole chapter on why the guys should be the ones to lead and pursue. It’s in their nature. It’s the way God designed us. Kyle says:

“Have patience. Trust God’s timing. Don’t rush it. Let him pursue you. Feel free to give subtle signs that you are into him (we find these very helpful, in fact), but don’t lead the relationship for him.

If a godly guy you’re interested in isn’t making the move, then maybe he’s not the one for you. Or maybe he is not ready for a relationship. Again, have patience. It’s better to be single and wait for the right guy than to be with the wrong guy when the right guy shows up.”

Thank you Kyle. Now I just need to work on my patience.

Overall the book made me realize (not that I haven’t been told it a million times by my parents) that I am special, and one-in-a-million and should never settle. God has created me and placed me in my own unique story with my own Prince Charming waiting for me. My story won’t look like Kyle and Kelsey’s and it won’t look like my parents, but it will be my own, in God’s timing.

Like Jeremiah 29:11(NIV) says:

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

I can’t wait to see God’s plans for me.

(I also highly recommend Kyle’s music. Especially the song Plans, based off the verse above.)

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Thank you, Cait, for sharing your thoughts here on my blog. It is wonderful to have you guest post here on Hiking Toward Home.

*The book, The Chase, was sent to me by the publisher in lieu of reviewing it here on my blog.

Stepping Out Of The Box: Art Journey, Part 5

08.18.15

In 2007 the Lord started opening our eyes.

It was a long slow process but as we came home on furlough we started to see our home church and certain supporting churches with different eyes. Or rather we started to hear the messages with fresh ears and comparing them to scripture and finding that so much was taken out of context that the messages were more opinion and very little biblical doctrine. We started praying about how to disconnect and it wasn’t until 2009 that we did finally disconnect. There was a change in leadership and it became more plain that it was time to make a more drastic change.

Disconnecting was an emotionally painful process because we loved our home church congregation, we loved the new pastor but could not abide with his decisions that were based on opinion and not scripture. Disconnecting could only be done by leaving the mission field. God’s hand was in it as the national pastor, who had been pastoring the church while we were on furlough, was ready to step into position and lead the church.

In February 2009, before moving to the states, I had a counselor friend ask me about my art and why I had stopped creating. As I answered him he said he wanted to cry. It was heartbreaking to him to think about the loss of all that I could have done with my art to glorify the Lord in the last 18 years. How much the world missed out on…

That really got my attention. It made me stop and think and to begin to consider what place art might have in my life again.

We moved stateside and my husband took a pastorate at a church that turned out to be extremely dysfunctional. Around the same time, I was diagnosed with severe clinical depression. Extreme amounts of stress had taken its toll on me. But our being at that ‘dysfunctional church’ is how the Lord brought me the help I needed. So though it was hard to be a pastor’s wife in that situation, God meant it for good.

In March of 2010, another counselor who has become a very dear friend asked me the same question and suggested I get my sketch book out and start creating again.

The sketchbook came out along with the pencils and a move to another faith community, one that breathed life back into our family instead of sucking the life out of us. Our new church also helped to heal deep wounds and still continues to do so even now.

Around this time I had “met,” through blogging, several ladies that influenced me to get back to art. I wrote a post about them and how their posts had influenced me to actually go out and buy and stretch some watercolor paper in 2011. The paper sat stretched behind a door for a long time.

I even wrote a blog post about it for (in)courage. Part of that post ended up in a published book. (But you can read about that in my sidebar on the right. If you click on the photos it will take you to the posts that discuss that part of the journey.)

I applied paint to paper and faced my fear.

For one painting.

That was back in 2012.

I set the brush down and didn’t pick it back up until this past May.

Though I was not using a brush I was creating art in colored pencils, but longed to have the nerve to pick up the brush again and squeeze brilliant colors out of tubes and onto a palette.

In the last three years, the Lord has brought several books, encouraging people, bible studies, and sermons across my way to lead me back to the brush and pigment.

But those are stories for another day.

Is there a box you need to step out of? Share about it in the comments below.

Do you have a creative streak that you have been keeping under wraps? Is it time to let it loose and create again? Tell me about it in the comments below.

Don’t miss out on the rest of the story! Put your email in the subscription box at the top of the right side bar and the latest from Hiking Toward Home will be slipped into your email so you don’t miss a post.

If you have missed the beginning of this story you can read it by clicking the links below:

Same Message; Different Messenger

08.13.15

A few weeks ago my teens went to Youth Camp with our church.

A friend of mine and I decided to go up and visit camp for the day and stay for the evening preaching.

I was looking forward to seeing and hearing JC Groves preach again.

The sermon topic was “Consuming Worship” and how worshiping God was not just singing praise and worship songs at the beginning of a service on a Sunday but it is something that we are to do with our whole life. God blessed each of us with specific talents and we should be using them to bring glory to God.

“You can ACT at worship one hour a week or you can ACTUALLY worship God with your life.” -JC Groves

We need to: 1. Reflect on God’s Love and 2. Respond to God’s Challenges by 3. Surrendering to that challenge, which isn’t easy but it is rewarding.

When you surrender to the challenge, the Lord can give you a platform to share the gospel and glorify God, …using the talents God has gifted you with.

Sound familiar?

We are God’s masterpieces. (Ephesians 2:10)

A masterpiece isn’t something that you hide. You hang it up for all the world to see. You don’t hang it in an outhouse. (but then again there are those outhouse toilet seats that Willem de Kooning painted.)

As God’s masterpieces, He wants to show himself off through you. When we do what he created us to do, he can display his glory through us.

“You don’t hang a DaVinci in an outhouse.” -JC Groves

JC then went on to talk about his wife, who is a painter but all her paintings are in the basement, unseen, not hanging on the walls. A masterpiece is to be displayed for all to see not hung in an outhouse or left hidden in a basement.

At this point in the sermon my daughter turns around and glares at me. (Which JC noticed, while preaching, and commented on later.)

The same message God’s been preaching at me for several years now smacks me upside the head. Again.

I’m trying to obey and paint more and work at my art more but it is always sequestered at the bottom of the to do list, even though I know I should carve out time to work on it every week, if not every day. (Of course at the moment, I have to clean and declutter my studio because it recently became a dump zone when preparing for company a few days ago.)

(Sketched while waiting for dinner at the camp.)

Is the reason God is still sending the same message because I am not putting the effort in to it the way he wants me to? I am not good at balancing the spinning plates of raising kids, keeping house, and homeschooling. How do I add one more spinning plate of “a set time for pursuing art”?

If this wasn’t something God wanted me to pursue… why would he still be sending me the same message? For six years?

One could say I manipulate the message I’m hearing by the books I choose to read, however I have no control over the sermons others preach or the encouraging words others say to me. I had no idea that it would be a topic in the Truth Project video series bible study and other bible studies I’ve done.

I need to:

Paint more.
Post here more about it.
Post here to encourage others to be the Artist / Masterpiece that God is calling them to be.

and

Put my art out there… somehow.

Saved and Trapped All At Once: Art Journey, Part 4

07.21.15

So that guy I had a crush on that didn’t like me too much… well, lets just say I changed his mind.

And he helped to change mine too, but I will get to that later.

Though he may have thought me to be a monster while helping to get the Student Art show juried and hung, by the time the show opened I knew his name and by the time the show closed in May, just a few short weeks later, we were dating.

How did he help me change my mind?

He took me to church.

In October, 1991, we visited his dad’s church and I liked it and wanted that hope and peace that trio of ladies sang about. I wanted to have the secure anchor that guy sang about. I stood there with white knuckles gripping the pew but I came back week after week. Finally, on Christmas Eve, I accepted Christ as my Savior. I felt such a huge weight lift right off of me. I was ‘saved’ and on my way to heaven, I had become a Christian.

The church wherein I received Christ however was rather legalistic. If you were not doing A, B, and C then you better “check your salvation”. Even though the doctrine of Eternal Security was preached, it was overshadowed by all the legalism. Though I was now a follower of Christ, I was trapped in a box of legalism and it would be 18 years before I would realize I was inside a very small box.

I sat as a new Christian and listened to someone preach their personal opinions, which regarding art and literature were very slanted, and I was very influenced and being immature in my faith took everything in as though it were solid doctrine.

His negative opinions in the areas of art and literature were taken in and it changed my thinking hence putting me in a trap in which I was caught until 2009.

I loved the pastor who lead me to Christ and when he taught the Bible, without his opinion mixed in, he was a fantastic teacher. I learned so much sitting under his teaching and it did give me a great doctrinal foundation. He influenced me for a lot of good. He gave me a thirst for reading biographies of great men of the faith and missionary stories and the like.

However when it came to art he could only see the negative in all of it and would only refer to that. For him all art was bad and something to be avoided with maybe the exception of Albrecht Durer’s Praying Hands.

When it came to the subject of literature he did not read anything fictional. He had a disdain for C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien which I never understood. He loved Bunion’s Pilgrim’s Progress but had nothing but negativity for Lewis’ Narnia.

When it came time for me to transfer colleges to finish my Bachelor’s degree, I was intimidated to try something new. Going to a big university as opposed to the small community college I was so comfortable at was overwhelming to me. So I just didn’t. I stopped my education at an AA degree. I decided that I didn’t need a college degree to get married and have kids. I don’t regret my choice either, I couldn’t imagine life without my wonderful husband and fabulous kids.

What I regret is shutting down to art. Even though I hoarded art supplies and dragged them half-way around the world, and desired to instill a love for art in my kids, I seldom did anything except snap photos. I didn’t even doodle.

When the kids started having drawing assignments in their art books for school, I dabbled a bit with them. I wanted them to be creative and I wanted to still do creative stuff, just not as a career. Though I craved being creative, art had been lowered to not even a pastime or hobby and I made no time at all for creativity.

When we first arrived on the mission field I drew this as a card to send to a friend who was about to become a mom. It was the last thing I drew for a long time and it obviously was never sent.

I did very little art-wise for 18 years.

If you have missed the first two parts of this story you can find them by clicking the links below:

Part One

Part Two

Part Three

The College Years: Art Journey, Part 3

05.12.15

I shared some with you all about my college in my last post about how much I hated high school.

Though I discussed college a little bit.

I ran across some old photos from that time that I have decided to share.

This is the first painting I ever sold. I painted it while taking Painting 1 at the University of Maryland during the summer semester of 1990.

I sold it for $75.

It was for an assignment that we had; to do several paintings influenced by different Masters of our choice. I did this one based on Jackson Pollock.

This is me when I was the Vice President of the Student Art League of Prince George’s Community College, Fall 1990…

One of my favorite teachers was my Watercolor teacher. She is the one who instilled my love for watercolor.

In the Spring semester of 1991, I became the President of the Student Art League. The Advisor for the Student Art League was the Sculpture and Ceramics Professor, John Krumrein. He was another one of my favorite teachers. He was a bit crazy which made him all the more fun.

As the President of the SAL, I had to type all 250 labels for each of the pieces that was accepted into the exhibit. On a typewriter. And I could not use whiteout to fix my typing mistakes. So I had to type some of them more than once. There was one in particular that I kept messing up. I typed the title wrong or forgot to capitalize something or misspelled his name. I was getting really mad. But whoever he was, his photo had won first place in the Photography category.

As it turned out the guy who’s name I had to retype so many times… was also the cute red-head I had a crush on. By the end of school that semester we were together every. single. day.

I’m so glad I was able to change his mind about what he thought of me.

If you missed the beginning of my Art Journey you can find them here:

Part 1

Part 2