This lady is an artist...

This lady is an artist.

She never had any formal training, but she loved and searched for beauty — in her life, in her relationships, in her faith. She saw tiny details that others didn’t notice -- the intricacies of a fern, the different colors of green in the spring, the adorable fuzz on a bumble bee. She wore “interesting” clothes that others didn’t always understand. And she brought colors and flowers and joy into her small home, inviting beauty into her space and her heart.

Yes, this lady is an artist, and this lady has a beautiful soul. She looks up and holds her head high because she knows who she is -- and she loves who she is. She knows she has wings somewhere, sometimes covered up by the stress of the present. But she will find those wings. And she will soar.

But it wasn’t always that way. Before… she didn’t believe in herself; sometimes she hated herself. She knew she wasn’t an artist; that was something other people did. She wasn’t talented in that way; she wasn’t good enough, creative enough, smart enough... The words she spoke to herself weren’t always nice, sometimes harsh. But words that others spoke were worse. So she walked through her life, doing what was expected, not making waves.

And then life changed; things got really hard. Then they got harder. And for a few moments that turned into months, that turned into years, it felt impossible to breathe. It was hard to sleep, even harder to wake up. And during those days that lasted forever, her head wasn’t looking upwards. It looked toward the ground, hoping to get one foot in front of the next. And she never even considered that she might have wings.

Yet she was a mother. And mothers keep going. They keep going when nothing else works. They keep going at three in the morning when they haven’t slept for 24 hours. They keep going when they are sick, when they hurt, when everything else crashes down around them. And she had a beautiful daughter that needed her; she had to (and would) find a way through the rubble.

And even though she was sure she wasn’t an artist (others had made that clear, hadn’t they?), she poked and snipped and sewed and prayed -- her therapy. Her fingers and her mind were mending pieces of her life. And she watched as the pieces came together to tell a new story.

She was, in fact, an artist.

She was creating beauty. She was curating moments in wool. She was clipping and stitching stories of what life is… She was writing a diary with her needles, and she was learning to trust who she was and who she was meant to be. And in those moments of realization, she felt growth. She felt growth in her soul and growth in her life, and growth in her mind. She suddenly realized that she might be able to fly one day; she might have wings.

And as she saw herself opening up to new possibilities and new beginnings, she understood that her story was the story of many. She realized that she could tell those stories and use her art and words to heal some of the broken places -- in herself and others. Her path could help rewrite stories. Her flight could give wings to others.

And so she started. One stitch, one snip, one prick at a time, she was creating art. And she was healing.

And, yes, healing takes time. This lady knows that. But she also knows that there is beauty in the process. But remember… this lady searches for beauty… And now she has found it.