Right on Time

It always takes me awhile to really get settled into a space—my art studio being a perfect example.

I recently spent some time rearranging and reorganizing my art studio…again. It's been a little over two years since we moved into our home (my childhood home), and I think this was round 3…or maybe 4. I'm sure it will continue changing over the years, but for now, I'm happy to say that it finally feels right.

Now I love sitting down at my workspace—all of the colored pencils, acrylic markers, charcoal pieces, and crayons on display and at the ready—couldn't be more inviting!Much better than stored in respectable, sterile-looking bins.

Sure, ideally, I would have set things up this way right from the start and never had a need to rearrange again. But the reality is, it just took time. There is a certain amount of “feeling things out” and working in a particular space that needs to happen first, to know if everything is set up in what seems most in sync with the way I work in and use a space. Time, trial, and error are an integral part of the process.

During my reorganizing, I found myself looking at a number of unfinished works and found myself thinking I should try and finish them before year’s end—just push through and get them done so I could feel good about that. I also thought about studying a few processes and techniques I'd been wanting to try. I thought about a lot of things that I felt would be great to get done before January 1st.

I wanted to “finish the year strong” to set myself up to start the year off at a run. But what does that really look like? While all of those thoughts might be good things to pursue, the critical realization I came to was that those thoughts reflected my own self-imposed expectations of how I thought things should be progressing, and how the world might measure my progress… while ignoring how the Master Artist might see it.

So I asked myself, what might “finishing the year strong” look like to God?

My answer came simply in the season of Advent: a time of hopeful waiting and joyful anticipation. A time of active stillness. A time of interior preparation, rather than exterior work. To trust the unfolding of the plan, all in God's perfect timing.

And so I'm doing my best each day to ask what God wants me to spend time with, how God wants me to spend my day, and to surrender my own feelings of needing to push and do.

I'm doing my best to enter into the season, to allow God to do the work within me that will surely set me up to be in the best place possible to enter into the gift of the new year, and all that God has in store.

My friend, as the final days of this year are being written, I pray that you too may enter deeply into the beauty of preparing a joyful and peaceful place within your heart, remembering that God is truly with us, just as He promised.