Stepping out in faith

One Year Art Journal isn't a spiritually focused blog, but quite often its prompts put me in touch with my spirituality. The Nov. 15 prompt is "What Do You Want Right Now?" and the second "booker" prompt is to use rubons. Well, it just so happens my most recent rubon purchase is some spiritually focused ones I bought about a year ago, to illustrate my grandson's baptism on a scrapbook page. I also had a few much older rubons that are like fake stitches.

The older rubons came off fairly decently for their age, although since they are white, I am not sure how well they show up in this photo. They are on the left side of the page, which I had already created a striped watercolor background on.

The newer rubons were more of a challenge. Big chunks of all three stayed on the backing, no matter how much I rubbed. So, I decided to fill in the gaps with some gold Stickles.  Not perfect, but better. The top rubon is a dove, the bottom one, which largely stuck to the backing, is a cross. In between is a quote "Let The Faith In Your Heart Be Your Guide."

It is this quote that inspired the rest of my journaling. As One Year Art Journal and several other inspiration sites prompted, I picked a One Little Word for the year, which was "Content." At the beginning of 2013, I thought I'd have plenty of good reasons to focus on the portion of that word that means "being content with what you have." (I also was focusing on some of the other meanings of the word, but that's not part of the point of this entry.) I ran out of unemployment in April, so I was bracing myself for what I thought (correctly) would be a rough year.

But things started looking up in May. I started my business, Pen Porter, that month. Seeing as I invested nothing but the cost of registering my business, it's been profitable. Not quite as much as I'd hoped, but then in August, I got hired to manage the Jurupa Valley Chamber of Commerce part-time. So there's another little bit of income, and it's more than I thought it was going to be. So that's good.

On the somewhat bad side, I've decided I had to split my income off from Don's. I won't go into all the reasons why, but if you know me, you might know why. But the up side of that means I now have some freedom to spend some of my income as I see fit. There's a million things I want, far fewer things I can get.

And then there is a challenge to reach beyond myself. My co-worker, Bob Hernandez, inspires me to this in many ways. He is working at the Chamber strictly as a full-time volunteer, but invests a lot in me both timewise, and financially. He would like to see me "pay it forward," although I can only do so on a limited basis now.

But Sandals has always challenged people to reach beyond themselves. For the past six weeks it specifically has done so through its "Reach" building campaign. This campaign asked us to look beyond ourselves and let God move in our church. Sandals also has a holiday gift giving ministry.

It gave me a lot of pleasure to invest in two gifts for a 13-year-old girl, and to commit a small amount of money over the next two years to the building campaign. I feel like I am a part of something significant, that will reach far beyond myself. I've blessed a young girl, and I've helped my church bless many others through the building campaign.

The journaling at the bottom of this page explains "In the past few months, I have moved from being simply content to feeling blessed and looking beyond myself."

I know this is exactly how God wants me to feel. And therefore, it's what I want for myself right now.