He Gave it To Me, and It Won't Be Taken From Me.

I have been afraid.

Afraid of what taking responsibility for my own talents and gifts might mean.
That if it was up to me, in the least, I would drop the ball... not be good enough.
I have a feeling that is part of what has had me paralyzed the past few months.
Between that and years of taking too many studios at one time, semester after semester,
and you are setting yourself up for a perfect equation.. a+b+c= burnout.

My art is my worship, it is not who I am-- and yet it is.
I have been afraid that I don't take it seriously enough,
that I take it too seriously. That I'm at the edge of the cliff,
seeing the promised land. I have been afraid to go in and face the giants.
The land that God promised to me, a land "flowing with milk and honey"...
And I have seen it promised to me, not greatness for my own sake,
but simply the fullest form of my worship. Good grief it nearly brings me to tears
to think of it.


The minute I treat it like a chore and not something to glorify God with
(that began months ago... months and months ago)
It becomes a laborious routine. The creativity becomes sucked right out of it.
Put a little pressure on a grape and you get the juice, let it age for a season and you get wine.
but too much pressure on a rock and you don't get water... you get a crushed rock.
You get dust. I felt the pressure, and for a while it was wine, but somewhere along the way
Maybe I had been in the press too long.. and I began to feel the cracks,
A cracking and chipping way down deep in my soul.

I have been struggling with that soul ache for the past six months, I think.
I wanted to escape design. Then guilt began to come; How can I do this for the rest of my life
if I'm thinking this way? Sure, everyone gets burnt out, but am I made for this?

"Am I simply going to miss the mark?" echoed in my head loud and clear, day in day out for the past six months.

It got louder this semester, much louder.
I was excited for class until class began, and then the struggle came.
NOTHING WAS GOOD ENOUGH. I felt like I was letting myself down.
But why? Why was this happening?

Why was I paralyzed? Why was everything I did chipping at my soul instead of nurturing it?
I just wanted to lay down and rest, run away to Europe, work at a camp, hide in the mountains.
I would be working on my work, something that usually brings me great joy,
and I would day dream of just getting in my car, driving to the Atlanta airport without telling a soul and moving to Italy or going back to Ireland for a few months.

Now that's not reality, of course, but I wanted it terribly.

And I found it, recently. The source of my exhaustion. Searching for months for the cause.
It has been no one thing, mind you, but one thing I found to be true.

I had been waiting for someone to pick me out of the crowd, to tell me that my talent and all that I was was enough to be great. To promise me excellence in everything for the rest of my life.
To hand me a contract that would solve all my insecurity, worry, heartache, and headaches.

But you see God had already called me. He already called me great. This is not a metaphor for salvation, although that, too, promises blessing and victory.

My entire college experience, God has confirmed, affirmed, and directed me to design. It is not who I am, but it's a part of who He made me to be. I am a designer, as He is a designer. My creativity comes from Him alone. The reason I am at the school I'm at, doing the major that I'm doing, that I'm with the people I'm with, loving every second of the hard work and effort, is because of God and His goodness.

He reminds me time and time again that He's got this land promised to me, but I have to go in and fight for it when He says to, not before or after. I can't force it, nor can I run from it.

And it may not be the way I'd chosen, but His ways are better.. His timing is better.


I don't know what to say other than He is the reason I'm here, and if He is my reason, then who or what should hold me back? What should I wait on? If my work isn't perfect every time, then what rock will come falling down on me if He has called me to it?


He knows the plans He has for me, plans to prosper and not harm me, to give me a hope and a future. That verse has been over my life from day one. My aunt prayed it over me while I was in the hospital, three months premature in an incubator being fed through a tube and being changed in a box. My mother couldn't hold me for weeks, they weren't sure if I would live... but I have been called and blessed from day one.

He gave it to me, and it won't be taken from me.