The Girl in the Lane Blog: What inspires me may inspire you: Father

By far the greatest inspiration for anything and everything I do is God. Because I believe he sent his son to save me I get to be his child. I get to call him Father.

The fact that I am a visual person is no surprise. I became a Christian as a younge girl. As far back as I can remember, one of the ways I hear the Holy Spirit is through images. I will have an image in my brain and I have to make it. It sits in my brain very clearly until I work with my hands to give the image life.

Name Above All Names

I know it is God's direction not because I want it to be but more often because I don't want it to be. Not always but often the image that shows itself in my brain is not one I want to make. It is challenging in some way or another. I might think it is artistically beyond my skills, it isn't the medium I want to work with, or it just isn't what I want to make. I remember in high school I painted an image of Jesus's feet. Feet are kind of ugly. I didn't want to paint feet but I did because I choose to believe and trust. I chose to obey. When I obey, I grow. My skills improve or I find more confidence in the skills already there. Sometimes the art sells (the feet did by the way) and sometimes it doesn't because that wasn't his point in having me make it. I always learn some lesson.

When an image shows up in my brain it is always very clear. Sometimes is grows but it is always very clear. Name Above All Names was always clear as it grew and as it grew, I did not want to make it. It is scary to be this honest. I don't want to be. It seemed too hard but mostly I knew the making of this would push me to be open about my faith in new ways. I knew I had to tell the story of how God put this picture in my brain because really he made it. I didn't.

It is scary to be this honest because if you haven't experienced something similar, it sounds a bit crazy or at least foolish. I guess I am mostly in a place where I don't care if it does come across as crazy because I know it is true. I cannot prove anything. I can only tell my story. I am not in other artists' brains but I would imagine any creative person Christian or not has experienced a strong drive to make whatever it is they are thinking of. I have no doubt God works in every one of us. Whether we choose to recognize it as God is up to us.

I also know there are things I come up with on my own just as any artist does. Often these ideas don't work out but that isn't really the difference because sometimes they do. It isn't that my ideas are bad. God has given me my own creativity and free will, gifts I am very grateful for. It isn't always a big bold statement piece that shows up in my brain from God either. Right as I type this I am eager for the time to start a very simple project he has given me. The ideas I come up with can fade, be forgotten, or just weren't that great to begin with but what comes from the Holy Spirit must be done. What comes from him stands out because he is trying to tell me something.

I asked many of my friends, "What name do you do you say when you pray?" They wrote their answer on a little colored paper of their choice. Many needed to write down a few names. I also added many of the names for God and Jesus found in the Bible along with the names for God and Jesus in other languages. I used the papers to make his face, well a face that can be easily recognize as Jesus. I have no idea what he looks like but someday I will.

It reflects how different we all are. We are all found in different ways and we all reach out in different ways but he loves all which makes us all one.