Overcome, an original canvas, which will release on 07.20.20 with my second fine art collection, Foundations.
There are so many words, and there are no words. What started out as a world health crisis (lives, so many lives) has quickly morphed into a world heart crisis - 2020 has been a year of unraveling, exposing the insidious places where disease consumes and multiplies. We’re reckoning with our own complicity in the racial, social, and economic oppression of our Black brothers and sisters as we’ve participated in white-dominant spaces without explicitly moving toward anti-racism. I shared this on our Instagram stories a couple weeks ago, but the fact that racial justice was a part of my life for nearly seven years before so quickly slipping into a sleep state in my brain says so much about my inherent privilege. Doing the work, honoring the work already done by so many.
A Man And His Flowers, an original canvas, which will also release on 07.20.20 with my second fine art collection, Foundations.
Maybe the biggest disease is the one we've been breeding for generations. Corporate and individual racism, corporate toxicity, the brokenness of our healthcare system, the inadequacy of our leaders, religious greed, the prison industrial complex - it’s unending. Then we have our own personal pandemics, the quiet places where we carry pain and terrible thoughts, unleashing as the tidiness of life has dismantled. Navigating new normals at home, relearning our spouses, children, roommates, and ourselves (do I really snap this quickly?). Our entitlement, our expectations, our unresolved pain, our discontentment (were the bathroom tiles always this bad?). A pause to say that I realize what a gift it is to be at home this season, within the safety of our walls, the warmth of each other. I see those who don’t have this privilege - single parents and essential workers - I can’t even imagine the weight. Perhaps there’s enough grace for honest reflection to sit alongside real and hard circumstances of which I have little understanding.
The beauty of exposure, when aired, acknowledged, and properly tended to, is the healing that comes. Nothing can ever be restored if left in the dark. As we wrestle with the eruption of this mess at large, I’m wrestling with the mess inside: the disgruntledness, irritability, and insecurity that finds its way to the surface between sunrise and sundown. Somewhere between diaper changes, cooking, late night painting, laundry, gardening, small business survival, toddler activities, and the whole of it, I often find myself exhausted wondering if I’ve even done a thing at all. Is this you, too?
This is the hope that washes peace over me like clear water, hope, the permanent vaccine for our souls: the work of my hands doesn’t define my value, my worth. Not the things I’m working toward, not the beautiful home I’m trying to maintain or the wonderful children we’re trying to raise, not the success of the business or marriage I hope to have. The life we’re in now, the mouths wiped, the floors swept, the big ideas jotted on scraps of paper in between reading the mystery and a quick side hug for your person, is the gift. Whether it's for a season or a lifetime. This is the place. Wherever you are in your faith journey (if you have one at all), the most freeing message is that we are loved as we are, our Creator loves us as we are. Salve that softens any blow, sustenance to repeat another day at home or in the ongoing journey toward justice.
being restored,pat
