Dot Painting

Hey y’all!  I have finally recovered from the Thanksgiving holiday.  On Saturday, Carr and I went out into the world and talked with real people.  Not that I didn’t see real people other days.  It just felt good to be out and about meeting some new and interesting people.

We went to the Heritage Park Christmas Bazaar in Glen Rose.  We saw some old friends from Chisholm Trail Outdoor Museum, the Somervell County Tourism Office, and met some new friends that live just a few miles from us.  Pretty cool.  From Glen Rose we traveled to Paluxy and saw our friends at Sledge Distillery.  I signed up for a Dot Mandela Designs paint class being held there.  Carr went with me.  We painted on glasses using sticks.  It was so fun.  And the cups came out great.  See the picture.

One of the things that I have used in my healing has been art therapy.  The thing I love about art therapy is that it can take many different forms.  Earlier this year I took a pottery class and enjoyed creating something with my hands.  I also enjoy cross stitch class and I like simpler things like sticker books. This is where you have stickers and you put them on the page with corresponding numbers which create beautiful images.  Sometimes its word finds or connect the dots.

Saturday’s class was about putting paint on a glass with sticks.  Wooden dowels to be exact.  I had twigs you pick up out in the yard in my head when I first read the flyer.  We did a snowman collage so to speak.  It was fun.  It was also stressful.  I have a great need to have everything perfect.  I had a few goofs and wanted to start over and over and over.  Lisa, the host of the class was so sweet.  She kept telling me to just have fun.  I don’t know how to just have fun.  Everything seems to be a test.  Am I good enough?  Can I do it?  I am jealous of people that can just enjoy the process.

So, I am learning to enjoy things just because.  The process.  Enjoy the process.  I am my own worst critic.  I am so hard on myself.  I am trying to learn how to accept myself, as I am.  For so many years I have struggled to hide.  Hide myself, my body, my brain and my thoughts.  I have tried to be invisible.  It hasn’t worked.  Although it hasn’t stopped me from trying to make it happen.

This journey is exposing me.  I am “putting myself out there.”  It scares me.  Bad.  There are so many times where I am sure that what I am sharing is going to repel people and they are not going to like me.  I want to be liked.  I don’t want to offend anybody.  I want people to understand where I’m coming from.  I take responsibility for everyone’s feelings.  I know in my head that I am not responsible.  My heart, my soul tells me I am.  That is a lie.  It is a lie that I am having a hard time giving up.  It has been my modus of operandi for so long, letting it go feels weird.  Unnatural.  Uncomfortable.  These feelings have kept me in bondage to the past and are the lies I have built my castle on. 

I don’t want to live in my castle anymore.  I liked the freedom of enjoying the process of Saturday.  It was liberating.  My glass is not perfect.  It has flaws.  Like me.  But I look at it and fondly remember the process of making it.  Sitting with my husband and several other ladies in the class sticking paint on a glass with wooden dowels and coming out with a picture.  A cool picture.  I like what I created, and I like that I enjoyed the process.  There may be hope for me yet.  Actually, I know there is hope for me.   My Father in heaven has told me so.  And He knows all.

Okay, bye for now.

Delisa (and Carr)