a question :: selah cottage

{via pinterest}

today is the birthday of my dearheart soul-sister, Beth. she's having a giveaway over at her place for her precious art awakening e-course, MADE, which begins in four days. my own heart cannot bear the excitement of stepping beside amazing artist-souls and merging in community with them. but there, at her place, she asked a question.

:: what question has been pressing on your heart lately?

we closed on our new home on Monday.

we got in the car after the papers were signed and i cried. i still don't know why. there was a lot of emotion in this entire process, more than i could ever hope to sort out into the neat little piles most prefer when it comes to feelings. i'm okay in my jumble right now.

in the jumble, there comes questions. beautiful, wild, frightening questions that i honestly don't know how to answer. but there is one that comes up and holds my hand, nestles in the crook of my neck and whispers softly,

what are you going to do with what you've been given? 

i've been handed a precious gift. a new space, wide and untouched yet by our hands. we've smeared paint on the walls, covering over the cracks and spaces left by previous owners, changing pale blue and white to dark purple and slate grey. we've carried in cardboard boxes with hand-scrawled words like cookbooks and fragile and DVDs and placed them in each room where they belong.

i've been given a canvas of wood and stone and cement and plaster. now what am i going to do with this space i have been given? it comes back to that word i chose for 2013, before i knew what was coming, before i knew the way this road would feel beneath my feet.

{via pinterest}

// release //

every year i pick a word. and every year it changes me, powerfully, in a sweeping strange way that i can only equate to fingers dipped into paint and spread wide to change the very depths of my soul, as though a wall needed repainting. 

and so i'm packing up each thing i own, shaking off the old dust and leaving in this place. i don't want to take it with me to this new place. what am i going to do with what i've been given?

i'm going to release the old. i'm going to smear the new on my canvas, dipped straight from my soul. i'm hanging the portrait of the Dawn Treader on the bedroom wall and whispering close, Aslan, Aslan, Aslan...

we named our new home selah cottage :: the little home of peace. and that's what i want to find there. i want to reach out my hands, open and waiting, and let the Peace beyond all i can know rain down and fill me up. i'm laying down art here. i'm making an altar, a monument to Glory, in the selah of my new space. 

i'm being made new. 

You make me new

You are making me new

You make beautiful things out of us. 

{beautiful things :: gungor}

Pose

Judge a man by his questions rather than his answers. ~Voltaire 

I have found myself in a field of questions these days.

Some have been doubts, others have been curiosities.

Each one of them have sent me running to the Heart of my King. And there we sit together, He and I, as I run my fingers over the pages of my Bible. I will never cease searching for the answers that I know are within for me to take and draw into my heart.

Questions are not a lack of faith. Please never let anyone tell you that, because it is such a vicious lie. How can we learn if we do not ask? How can we step forward until we gaze up at the Cross and whisper, "why?"

We just have to be prepared for the answers. If you dare to ask, you must be prepared for the forthcoming answer.

Last month, I opened up my blog for my readers to ask me any question they wished me to answer. The ones I received were beautiful and thought-provoking, and I answered them all about a week later.

I am about to do the same thing again.

I want you all to ask me anything.

Stay close to the surface, or dive deep beneath the surface. Stick to the simple delights of life, if you wish...my loves, my hates, the beauties of life....

...or push into the darker jungles to ask me about my fears, my hardships, my struggles, and my pain.

I have never promised perfection. Not once. 

What I have promised is reality. Openness and a soul bared before the Throne, as well as to each one of you. 

We grow from the witness of others. From knowing we are not alone in our pain. From knowing that there is more beyond this moment of fear. From knowing someone else has walked this path.

The only thing I ask is that you keep your musings free from expletives and appropriate for public discussion.

So please, 

let go

and ask away. 

"To what will you look for help if you will not look to that which is stronger than yourself?" ~C.S. Lewis

Pregunta (Question)

I think, at a child's birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.  ~Eleanor Roosevelt

Questions are important to life.

We are born with the innocence of curiosity...the need to know, search, muse, and ponder the things set before us.

The statement has been made that there is no such thing as a "stupid" question, and I am inclined to agree. How can we know if we do not ask? What things can we glean if we keep our musings behind our lips and unheard by those who may have the answers we seek?

So here, I give you the opportunity to exercise your gift of curiosity.

Ask me what you wish to know. 

Ask me anything.

Any question...no matter how "foolish" you may thing it may be or how trite it may sound to your own ears.

Ask me of my life, my dreams, my wishes, my inspiration, my heroes and my failures...my favourite colour to my deepest beliefs.

Put your question in the comment section of this post, and I will answer it with all honesty in a forthcoming post.

Obviously, there is a level of decorum and appropriateness that is accepted, but I am most sure that I do not have to bring this to your attention.

I have laid down the welcome mat and unlocked the door of my mind.

Open the door, if only just a crack.

Be curious.

And ask away.

The important thing is not to stop questioning.  Curiosity has its own reason for existing.  One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality.  ~Albert Einstein