Atlantis & Her Story: Sarah

Hi friends! it's friday already! we have (yet again) a very busy weekend, two birthdays to celebrate and more friends in town! we love seeing all our close friends but geez I'm tired!

also this weekend is the final launch of the space shuttle Atlantis. it's by definition a bitter sweet moment. I ditched Sonny to watch it go off today...and I have an overwhelming feeling they're going to cancel it due to weather. I've heard it might go off tomorrow or Sunday, either day works for me NASA. but if and when it does go off, lets take a second and pray for those amazingly brave men and women.

heavenly father we come to you know to pray for the astronauts in Atlantis right now. calm their nerves Lord and just surround them with your Holy Spirit. remind them that there are millions of people praying for them and all that they do. I pray you give them the strength and courage they need while up in space. God be with them as they make this amazing adventure!

today I have miss Sarah from Kiwi gets Crafty. she is an amazing young woman of God and she lives in New Zealand, and says things like 'mum' :) {how awesome is blogging! when would I have ever met someone from New Zealand?!}
 if I can be so honest...craftyness is not something God gave me...or so I thought before I read her story. it's full of inspiration and really is encouraging to some one who doesn't think being creative is their thing. visit her blog, and here's her amazing story about God.

Hi there, I'm Sarah! You can find me blogging over at Kiwi Gets Crafty. This is my story (one of them anyway, I'm sure we all have loads).

I was never the creative type really. Not on paper anyway. In my head I could paint masterpieces, compose symphonies, sing like an angel and sculpt perfect figures. But whenever I tried to translate it out of my head and into reality it would come out just . . . wrong. At least it looked wrong to me. Painted lines never went the direction I wanted them to and I could never hit the right note in even the simplest of songs. I wasn't the only one who noticed. Being surrounded by beautifully creative friends in my high school years was both a blessing and a curse. I loved that I could marvel at the beauty of God's work every day in their gifts and the things they created. On the other hand, having friends who would correct your artwork or whisper to you to stop singing so badly during worship in Church wasn't the best for my self-esteem! Eventually I gave up on the idea of having a creative bone in my body. After someone took a pencil to the one painting of mine I thought looked ok-ish enough to hang on my bedroom wall, I packed up my paints and left them on the bottom shelf of my wardrobe. When people asked me to sing I started to describe my own singing as “like swinging a cat against a wall.” And that was that. There were a few times when I asked God why, even a few stabs of jealousy for the abilities my friends had that I just didn't. But it was mostly just blind acceptance that being creative wasn't in God's plan for me, with perhaps a little bit of secret hurt. Either way, I started to push away the part of my thoughts that painted and sculpted and sang in my head and tried to 'love myself for who I am.' It's only recently that I realised just how twisted that phrase can be!

It was over 5 years later that I met Ben, the man who will one day be my husband. By the time I had been dating Ben for a year I knew not only that he was the man I was going to marry (I'd known that the moment we met), but that someday in the future we were going to have children. We were going to be a family. I had never had a concept of that before, never reached a point in my mind where I would have a family of my own. But suddenly it was there, it was real, a promise from God. And with that promise came a yearning in my heart to provide for that family, to provide a home in the way that the woman of Proverbs 31 could. That passage had always stood out to me, but with God's promise it took on new meaning. These parts in particular (from The Message) are my favourites:

She shops around for the best yarns and cottons,

and enjoys knitting and sewing.

She's up before dawn, preparing breakfast
for her family and organizing her day.

She's skilled in the crafts of home and hearth,
diligent in homemaking.

She doesn't worry about her family when it snows;
their winter clothes are all mended and ready to wear.
She makes her own clothing,
and dresses in colorful linens and silks.

I know that those passages don't have to be taken literally, but I had cross-stitched since I was a little girl. I had never really thought of it as creative. I just liked the rhythm, it was methodical and even I could follow a simple pattern. It was something I knew I was good at, but not something I ever shared (people my own age tended to laugh at me for embracing such an 'old-fashioned' hobby). With that yearning to provide for my future family came a change though, especially as I took Proverbs 31 into my heart. I started experimenting with my stitching, changing the colours in patterns and using materials that I wouldn't normally use. I began to find a joy and a peace in the stitching beyond the simple rhythm, as I thought about stitches that would decorate Ben and I's first home and the birth samplers I would make for our children. As I started to take more Godly joy in my plain and simple hobby I became less afraid to share it, finding that there were people in my life that truly appreciated my work. I had always given away the occasional stitch to family (there's only so many you can hang on your own walls), but I starting gifting more widely and receiving compliments on my work. Soon I was getting comments on how creative I was!! A new sense of who I was and what it meant to be 'creative' burgeoned in my heart. It dawned on me that perhaps the crafts of the home were my creative side. During a university holiday I sat down and asked my mum to teach me how to knit. To both her and my amazement I picked the basics up within a few minutes, and finished a hot water bottle cover within days. The same went for crochet and other forms of embroidery when I started teaching myself. Although I've struggled to teach myself to sew, and learning to cook is an ongoing (but fun!) process they also give me joy.

Ultimately I guess my story is one of God's goodness and faith. I gave up hope of ever having a creative side, but God knew the secret pain in my heart and didn't give up on me even when I tried to accept what I was rather than what he could make me into. Then He introduced me to the right man and gave me a promise. That promise made me strive to be closer to God and let God show me a new type of creativity, one I had never considered but gives my heart the upmost joy in Him as the creator of all. He answers your hearts desires, even when you don't know you have them or try to hide them.