Knee Deep

One day last semester, my seniors were finished early with Home Ec class, and a bunch of them took out their ipods and cell phones to try to find a song that baby girl liked. (Totally against school policy to have them not "off and away", but it was so fun...don't tell my husband who is in charge of discipline.)  They held their electronic devices up to my belly and saw what song made her move the most.

This is the song that they chose for her...



It makes me smile.  It's perfect for a sumer baby.  And it makes me excited to meet her.

37 weeks...full term!  We're ready for you, baby girl!

Operation: Stay put, baby. Check!

I had the most amazing week.

1- because I got to spend an entire week with my friend, Jen, who is quite possibly the best houseguest in the whole world.  She cooks, cleans, makes me nap, plays with Molly, tells me to go to bed at night when I need to, encourages me to be as lazy as humanly possible,  and doesn't' mind incessant question asking during movies. (You can totally be jealous that she's my friend and not yours.)

AND...

2- I am 36 weeks pregnant and baby girl has decided to stay put for a little while longer...atleast until her Daddy can come back from spending 2 weeks in VA to finish up his master's classes.  He comes home tonight!!!!

Not only do I feel accomplished (Twilight saga and the Harry Potter saga all watched in a span of 7 days. woo hoo!)  but I feel very close to being ready for baby girl to be making an appearance.  Here's my list.  Look how much I've managed to cross off without Justin being here!  I'm stoked.

I feel like not only is my house is getting prepared, but emotionally, I feel I'm getting ready too.  I wouldn't say I'm excited.  I'm not anxious.  I'm not scared or apprehensive.  I'm just ready.  Ready for change.  Ready for newness.  Ready for joy and a sense of relief and gladness. And with that ready feeling comes cold fingers of guilt wanting so badly to squeeze hope away.  It's so strange the guilt that come with wanting to love another child that isn't the son I thought I'd love forever.  

I'm worried what I'll be feeling when she gets here.  

Will I wish I was holding Josiah instead of her?
When my heart is so used to loving and losing, will I guard it and not be able to love her like I should?
Will there be enough of me to go around so I can love her and Molly miss Josiah still all at the same time?
Should I even care if I miss Josiah or do I really need to start letting memories go?  Take his shoes out of the basket next to the door?  Take his pictures off of the walls so Molly can stop talking about him?

I know those are terrible things to think, and I hate even admitting to even entertaining those thoughts.  But there they are- worries that I'm struggling with.

And that is yet another reason why I am so glad that Jen was here this week.  We had a wonderful conversation about how there are feelings that come from God, and feelings that don't.  Jen told me that being sad comes from God.  It comes from an extension of experiencing love that can only come from Him, and then enduring loss of the object of that love.  Joy comes from God, from experiencing love and the good gifts He gives us.  Guilt does not come from God.  Guilt robs both sadness and joy away so that as Christians we can not experience those emotions fully.  Those emotions are gifts.  The world will tell you "get over it," "get through it," "replace sadness with something meaningful so it doesn't hurt as much," "stay as busy as possible so you don't have time to think about it."  We lose so much of the gift of grieving when we do that, and we fall into the trap of feeling guilty if we decide to linger on feeling sad for longer than others think we should.  

But let me say, how sweet this time of loving, and losing, and hoping has been.  It is in recognizing that both sadness and joy can coexist that makes me feel like I can be a good mom to the new blessing that is our baby girl.  And its not just that these two feelings coexist, I see one informing the other.  I see that as God consoles, He also transforms.  I think it is impossible for the nearness of His presence not to change us completely.  I am a better mom, a better student of the Word, a better teacher, a better artist, a better friend, wife, sister, daughter, .... because I have experienced real sadness and real joy.  (and be on the lookout...this has a lot to do with baby girl's name...) ;o)  

I am ready for her.

Operation:  Come out, baby.... commence!      

...actually... please wait until 11:00 tonight when your daddy comes home.

Psalms Illustrated according to ninth graders

School officially ended on June 3rd for me.  Hooray!  Lucky for me, my seniors were finished the Friday before, so I've only had my 9th grade Fundamentals of Art class at the end of the day this past week.  (Art History and Home Ec were done.)  Can I just tell you how much I love ninth graders?!?!  They never cease to surprise me.  Despite a lot of whining and unkindness towards each other (which causes them to lose daily points for the day...yes, I'm a mean teacher that demands they respect each other), they are pretty great kids.

This year, I made my students do a little journaling for the first 15 minutes of class. Every Tuesday and Thursday, they would have to open up their Bibles and sketchbooks and illustrate a Psalm, write out a verse, and a lesson they learned from it.

(So no, I haven't totally abandoned my "Psalms Illustrated."  I just make other people do it now too.)  :o)

For their final project, they had to make a Psalms Triptych- a 3 part work of art that is tied together with a central theme.  They had to choose 3 of the about the 25 Psalms they did and find three that went together somehow (in theme, in content, in color, etc.).  Then they had other stipulations like it had to include a face, three implied textures, an example of a complementary color, deep space created with aerial or 1 point perspective, the use of two media (colored pencil, pastel, watercolor, graphite pencil, etc.) ... all the little lessons I taught them throughout the semester.

I tend to give assignments that I wish I could do myself.  There is a lot of whining and hemming and hawing about how difficult they think it is, but once they all had their idea, it was so fun watching their artwork come together.

I am so proud of them all!  I love seeing what they've learned, and how they apply it visually.  I pray that the lessons that they've learned from having to sketch out an idea as opposed to just memorizing verses (which they all have to do for Bible classes) will stick with them and God will use it to continually teach them about who He is.

Here are just a few of them.

Paris: Part 4

Finding my way in Paris as artist...

I know I have written before about how I see God most clearly when I am making art.  I just think He wired me that way....  it's like we have this secret little handshake that we can only do when I get out my art supplies.  I have had the opportunity to do a rather large scale project, and as always, God teaches me more about Himself when I am faithful to use the gifts He has given me.  

It's funny to me that I meet with God in interesting ways when I am doing art that I don't particularly like.  I have 2 paintings that hang in city hall and now I can say, I have a new mural in the center of our town's ball field.  I would like to say I've gotten these commissions because I am just that good.  Nope.  Pure nepotism.  I have a bragging father who has been the town's mayor for far too long for anyone to argue with him.  I've heard him say on multiple occasions, "my daughter is better than Norman Rockwell."  I say he is half-delusional, half-one-proud-papa.  I've gotten used to blushing and rolling my eyes when I hear him talk about me in front of other people.  Still, it is nice to be known as a "Port Republic artist" by people who are blessed enough to live in our quiet little town, population 1200.

For our town's 100 year celebration of being "established as a 'city'," my dad wanted me to do a painting of what has recently become my nemesis, the Port Republic Bridge.

It was taken from a post card from 1905, and at our town's annual celebration, I sold prints of the painting.  I told everyone who bought it that the money was going towards my, "getting back to Port fund," so one day I could afford to live in the town where I grew up in that I loved so much.  (I was newly married at the time and Justin and I were living in a condo 20 minutes away.)  

The following year, I did another Port Republic painting taken from another postcard of The VanSant ship yard, a thriving and established ship-building company that used to be in the center of town a hundred years ago.  By doing that painting, I learned a lot about my family history.

 My great-grandmother, Laura VanSant (who I am named after), met my great-grandfather, Alonzo, while he was delivering cedar to the shipyard.  Here is a photo of her when she was about twelve, taken around the 1880's.

She's the one in the white hat.  Wasn't she adorable?  You can tell she put on her Sunday best- white gloves and all. The two boys next to her did't even have shoes on.  I guess it was a big deal to get her picture taken, and she didn't want to spoil the experience with wearing anything less than her best.  

130 years after that picture was taken, I found myself standing about 50 yards from where she stood in that photograph, in the little epicenter of our town, painting on a stucco wall.  I felt like it was one of those grand times in my life where opportunity, ability, preparation, and an answer to prayer to live where I do all intersected.  The experience felt like such an honor as I carefully and strategically brushed paint onto the wall.  

Over my right shoulder, this was my view.  

The church I grew up in.  The church where I married my husband.  

Over my left shoulder, was this.  

Nacote Creek and dozens of swans who call this place home. 

I worked in the late evening for the past three weeks, when God would light up the sky in hues of purples and pinks.  Warm wafts of honeysuckle filled the gentle breezes off of the bay.  I got to hear all of the birds go to roost as the sun went down, and talk to a lot of the townspeople who were riding bikes and walking their dogs.  Most knew me by name, or in the least, knew who I was. It was a grand feeling to put my mark on a place I love so much, where I feel like God created me to belong.  It was also fun to try to maneuver myself into interesting poses with baby girl protruding from my belly.  I can't wait to tell her the story of how we painted it together.  

The commission was for a race that our town hosts every year, and was painted on the back of the refreshment stand behind the town's ball field.  

No, I am not a sign painter.  I hate straight lines and being confined to paint something that requires so much exactness.  But I did get to pick the colors.  And the colors I like.  Half naked fish man showing off his massive pecs?  Not so much.  It figures that nepotism would be the reason I got to paint King Neptune.  I projected the image of the logo onto the wall, and then it was just one big paint-by-number project.  It's a good thing it was traced...I totally would have put an extra "a" in triathlon.        

The experience of painting it was an outpouring of praise, as I thanked God for His creation and provision.  (The check I received for doing the mural was the exact amount I needed to fund visiting my sister in Massachusetts 2 months ago.)  I am so grateful that God gives me opportunities to see Him so clearly while making art.      

and p.s.... below the sign, I wanted to paint "BEWARE OF BRIDGE."  But the mayor said no.  

       

Molly Time

I feel like I have a huge list of to-do's that are just looming over my head.  A big commission, finishing the girls' room, teaching in the afternoons (tomorrow I'm done...yay!), cleaning like a madwoman, and trying to fit in some relaxing time where I can put my feet up so my legs don't swell up like purple veiny sausages...sorry for the lovely mental image there.  I'm trying to do these things all before Sunday when Justin has to leave for two weeks.  Realistically, I think I'm going to have to let some things go...

I have great intentions of writing about all of these things and the lessons God has taught me through the process of getting ready for baby-in-waiting.  But until I can have pictures to show of completed things, I might as well wait.

So in the midst of trying to be productive, I am soaking up some Molly time and loving every minute of it.

Last Saturday, I got a lovely email from my local freecycle community notifying me of a "everything's free after 3:00 yardsale!" We were too late to scoop up what I went to get (a screened in gazebo)..bummer...but I got a few other little gems.  One of which, was this really cool vintage tin.  When I opened it, it was filled with zippers, and I thought to myself, "This is something that a Home Ec teacher should have."When I got home and took out all of the zippers, I was so excited the entire bottom of the tin was about 2 inches deep full of buttons!!!  So what did I do?

I spent an hour cleaning and sorting through them, of course.  Why?  Because I have nothing better or more pressing to do.  And buttons are awesome.  Every cool person should have a button collection.

Molly thinks they're pretty awesome too.  She spent a good 45 minutes playing with them on the floor this morning, scooping them up and dumping them into different containers and hearing how they clinked in the glass jar and how they thudded into the plastic containers.  She thinks they are just as magical as I do.  

We had to put them away when she started taking them behind the couch into her secret tunnel.  Maybe one day we'll put them into little glass jars and go bury them in the sandbox.  They can be our pirate treasure.  

It struck me today that there will be a time in the very near future when buttons on the floor won't be too kosher when there's a baby crawling around.  It makes me thankful for the time I have to spend with Molly before baby girl comes.  

Out of all the things I should be doing to prepare, I can't think of a better way I could be spending my time right now...you know... doing the important things in life like scooping buttons, tasting butter for cookies, and "painting."