Karenee Art

Broken People + Broken Relationships = Suffering

2012-05-19T00:00:00.000-05:00

~~I want to be clever and wise, but the fact is ... I'm just myself, often less.~~
~~The thing is, life is messy.~~
~~How do you talk about a painful disagreement without making people seem worse than I would want them to make me seem if I were them?~~
There is no start to something that isn't really explainable. I'll just write.

See ... I used to attend at a church building for many years ... but now I have to attend elsewhere.

I attend elsewhere because the church leadership sent me away a couple months ago when I told them I thought they were wrong in their expectations and handling of my situation and actively chose not to alter my decision to leave my husband ... for reasons more intrinsically destructive than dirty socks and annoying habits.

And so they explained they would no longer offer women's mentoring, or ministry opportunities, or fellowship within their section of the body, or welcome within their building if I wouldn't accept their command as spiritual leaders, and that they would eventually tell everyone in the church what I was forcing them to do if I didn't repent as soon as possible. Recently they told me they will make the announcement this Sunday.

Please understand they genuinely believe this is for my own good and feel awful that I'm making them do this to me. They are just as genuine in what they believe as I am ... or at least I hope they are. It would be more painful to accept this action from half-hearted or uncertain men, who might have done differently.

I know I'm not sinless ... and good intentions don't always play out the way we think they will, but I never thought I would disagree with Christians enough to keep disagreeing in the face of the ultimate pressure tactic. I have finally figured out why denominations exist.

I realize what they think of me, though, and it becomes clear that either I'm a vile sinner or ... well, I am one. There's not much dispute on that, though I prefer to focus on the thought that some of what I once did I no longer do, since it makes me feel better when I see Christ at work changing the fact of my sin into a demonstration of his grace. I've learned to accept being seen as a sinner as preferable to the rickety ladder/pedestal of goodness ... though mileage varies. Pride is a deep-rooted thing.

The problem with misconceptions that start with an element of truth ... is that it's rather hard to sort out the truth from the error. I can't sort it for them, because right now I'm seen as dishonest in some way. I don't think I am? But maybe I've managed to deceive myself so completely that I don't know it? *sigh* It's hard to know how to answer accusations that are founded on assumptions, and I'm just as likely to assume, though I try not to.

Everyone has their perspective,... and we know that even tangible objects appear irreconcilable in different lights, and from different angles and distances. So how do you set something intangible in stone and say "This is how it was"?

I can't.

I know what I experienced in the relationship we called a marriage ... and how I tried to put it in its most positive light for years, even when the positive light was a lie. It's interesting the things people call love ... that turn out to be deception.

But only God can see the whole story, and he promises to reveal truth eventually, no matter who is made uncomfortable in the process.

I expect not to be trusted, because what can a sinner expect? Trust is earned. Have I not earned it? Then I don't deserve it. But it hurts to be told I'm heaping judgement on my own head ... and that people I've always liked are hurt because they feel deceived since they thought I was walking with God, but I'm willing to do this ... and to have my past sins held up as reasons why I must be wrong now.

Yet suffering has always taught me something about God, and I wouldn't lose those lessons for anything. Based on past experience, I'll want to take back the last sentence all along the way to the other side ... where I'll claim it firmly and without regret.

I gave up on people somewhere along the way ... I mean as the deciding factors in whether I could believe that God is at work. I get distracted by what everyone says, too,... so I know how it goes. I'm not saying I'm holier or know better than anyone. But I do think it's wrong to say you believe what you don't believe just because everyone tells you to act "as if" you believe because they believe it and they expect you to, also.

Truth is what I actually am ... not what I wish people would see in me. And faith can only grow within truth. And true change starts in the core and grows out ... it's never superficial.

I think God is capable of putting me through purifying fire without losing me ... and if Christ is in anything it won't be destroyed in the burning. And they seem certain that God asks them to provide the flame of ... (whatever excommunication becomes when it's protestant) as their official duty of just love toward this one who has rejected the church's authority, as they see it.

So ... I'll stand in the fire. I expect to lose a lot of myself in the process. I'll change, though I'm not sure I'll turn out the way they think I should,... but who knows? I might.

If God is with me, whom shall I fear ... and if he isn't ... better to find out now.

And somehow there will be good as a result of an experience that feels entirely destructive right now.

Because it's not up to me ...

If the evil intentions of men who challenge God can be co-opted into good results as Joseph stated, then surely everyone's good intentions will be, too. God isn't overcome by me, or by anyone else either, no matter how we disagree on what is good and what Jesus would do about this matter.

God will win. I am looking forward with hope to see what he will accomplish.

---

Any perspectives seen above may be altered due to God's work on my heart.

When Silence Gapes a Chasm Wide

2012-04-30T17:29:00.000-05:00

I'm wounded deep and dare not speak
to unknown heart and distant face.
Explaining takes far more than words
and I might phrase without true grace.
Please understand? I will return,
and tell a story, though it's late.
But reigning back is wise till then,
and patience grows here as I wait.
From each of you, I ask your prayer
still, above all, just one request ...
That I will lose all that I must
to love God fully through this test.

Success or Life?

2012-04-08T00:02:00.000-05:00

Set direction as your heart inclines.
Success will be nurtured in every step
when choosing the person you're made to be.
... yet ...
Failure whispers even when you succeed
grasping the path, pursuing a dream
that ravages your intrinsic design.

"Entangled"

From the Wind Dancer Collection
Completed 3/28/12

16x20 acrylic and marker on canvas
-sold-

Success is growing and becoming ... learning from failure ... growing through difficulty. And, also, looking for the open path rather than always looking back at those which are closed.

There is always opportunity, but choosing a direction doesn't mean we'll walk a nice clear road, paved out in front. Sometimes it means we walk forward like those holding a compass in the wilderness--going around, through, over, under obstacles--but always aiming for our ultimate goal in the process. By the time we reach it, we will have far better skills because of our experiences along the way.

And sometimes the goal turns out to be higher and more resilient than the idea within which we once confined it. Travel in the wilderness also helps us find the truth of our desires and exposes when they are misplaced. This clarifies our vision so we don't chase after the frame, rather than the view.

Seeing Generosity

2012-04-07T09:41:00.000-05:00

Why, when I see a stranger form
a good, heartwarming, gentle act,
do my eyes fill with aching tears?
What mystery explains this fact?

Why does the laughter of the aged,
the wide smile of the weak,
a hug from grateful, honest poor
break me somewhere deep?

Perhaps I am reminded, then
of all that I might do.
Or maybe it just makes me glad
to see love can live true.

Fools

2012-04-01T12:57:00.000-05:00

Who managed to invent this conundrum?
A day during which one may freely tell the truth,
confident that nobody will believe it.

Originally published on April 1, 2011

Connection

2012-03-29T11:04:00.000-05:00

I only open toward you from me,

yet cannot complete nor solely retain,

alone in such effort,

no relationship could be

anything more than an offer, maintained.

Thoughts on Suffering

2012-03-27T09:15:00.000-05:00

My business just now is to suffer,
to feel my self and substance melt
into a molten pool of fire,
to watch the worst of me rise to the surface
and be scraped off and flung away.

Through suffering I become liquid
to flow into the form of God's shaping;
I will conform upon resting in his structure,
not through strength but in weakness.

I have become confident this pain will prove
the best gift God could have given.

Refining isn't a pleasant process,
but it is necessary and good.

The Canvas, Dread-Full

2012-03-24T11:38:00.000-05:00

It stares at me from corners, squared,
that mistaken texture I somehow caused,
whispering of mud and moss--
no more the blank, white, thread-grid canvas
which hope invited me to destroy.
Or was it an act of creation?
Now, in the middle, a seed of lines cries turmoil
and I wonder what I have done.
Could I scrape it clean?

Somehow,
choosing to finish,
to muddle through to beauty,
is a courage needed every day--
even with no canvas in sight.

I wonder what the end might be.

This work in progress

screams 'incomplete'

...

I am confident of this:

He who has begun a good work in you will complete it.

(my paraphrase of Phil. 1:6)

I'm still in the middle...

2012-03-21T14:33:00.001-05:00

I'm living a story climax ... that nerve-wracking, page-turning point where goals turn up empty, anticipated dreams crumble, and hope seems lost. Prayer is still much appreciated.

---

Watching life change around me,
I don't know what's ahead.
I see the page is turning,
yet the rustling sound brings dread.
On the other side, the answer
to the choices I just made
will only be beginning.
What might be beyond this place?

I'm confident in the author,
his fingers firmly form
an unexpected future
brought through this raging storm.
And so I'm watching closely
as this page of life is filled
to see the certain beauty in his theme.
My heart is stilled.

Making Claims of Character

2012-03-14T17:04:00.001-05:00

They are not representative, the words so simply said
of all the things desired to be that may have been, instead.
Character can't follow where one's feet will never tread.

Better to live fully real, growing from inside,
portraying not what some might seek, but truth, never to hide.

Sure, imperfections, faults and flaws, and sin are clearly seen.
Are these not within everyone?... even the most clean?
Don't grasp false reputation. Only truth can be redeemed.

Perceive, through weakness vast strength glows; and there is no disguise
can ever cover character when light reaches the eyes.

And so, though rumor carries far and gossip will unfold,
there is no need for character to protest, clamor, scold.
The truth within the story lived reveals tales untold.

---

This poem is meant to cut both ways.

Reputation is a temporal veil
...
but truth stands within full view of eternity.

Is this encouraging?... fearsome?
It depends on the heart's anchor, I suppose.

Facing "Impossible" Ideals

2012-03-07T11:48:00.000-06:00

I don't want to "become a business". I want to live pouring out, not drawing in. And so I have let people name their price for my artwork, because it isn't about how much they have to offer, but about how much they receive.

BUT

Will this ideal change when income becomes essential to basic independence? How can I know?

I see people build a business structure shaped around their creative dreams. They set prices, and I am not offended. Rather, I smile and send a praise upward to thank God for their courage. I admire them and even want to be like them. I learn from them, but still encounter resistance to that direction.

Am I truly called to depend on God for livelihood in a way that most would call foolish ... or even irresponsible?
Or am I simply resisting the facts and limiting God's work in my life?

I don't know if the vision is blindness or insight, if the direction is a calling or a deception.

There are potentials in this decision, both for beauty and for difficulty. I know the skills I've been given, the witness I want to be ... the story I think might be told. I long to exhibit what it is to live in dependence on God ... so that life can be an inspiration and a motivation for others to depend in other ways, at other times. In the end, it is the same dependence, whether it forms as a normal business structure or an incomprehensible plan, but the resulting story will have a different effect.

Being a writer, I apply; being a reader, I perceive: It is the difficult and unusual path that highlights the truth a story is meant to convey.

I don't want to wonder how much I can get, how greatly I might receive, how profitable I can expect to be. This heart admires the trees, grass, flowers, and birds who don't worry about how they will survive, but rather live a beautiful display of God's sufficient handiwork. Each fades and dies in its time, but their lives accumulate into a vast witness for the creativity and beauty God invests in them. I want to give, encourage, help, inspire, and proclaim God's trustworthiness.

Can I decide? Is it even my choice whether to invest time in pursuit of opportunity, trusting that God will use those efforts for his purposes, or whether I will simply give of what I have and trust God to provide opportunity to share more widely as a natural outflow of his good presence? It is the same faith ... but it is a different expression.

Most likely this vision has grown from growing up witnessing the lives of missionaries who worked day and night at tasks for which most of the world would expect income, yet lived instead in dependence on God for their daily needs. They work for God, yet the men and women who supported them also work for God. In the same way, a business is run to glorify God, and the services are appreciated by those who also seek to glorify God.

I'd like to become a "artist-witness-poet" ... but is that a valid calling? How can I know?

Sometimes, it seems, the only way to find out is to take the seemingly foolish path by faith ... and trust God to shed light on the situation by either demonstrating his sufficiency or destroying the effort. For now I continue to study, pray, and wonder. Direction will come, but the timing is not mine to decide.

A Thought

2012-03-06T09:30:00.002-06:00

The heart swallows meaning

and spits out words

meant to be touched and experienced

rather than heard.

---

So often my favorite idea arrangements are prompted by the thoughts of friends, including the above response to a mentioned inability to communicate the fullness of a moment with mere words.

If it weren't for the people who live into my life, I would be a gaping void ... incapable of expressing more than the repeated echo of nothing.

Found

2012-03-02T02:52:00.000-06:00

I’ve not yet wept the ocean tears
that wash against the dammed repression.
Too much of this eternity
I wasted in such false direction.
Oh, faith, I wonder what you are
when honest questions turn aside
to mar the landscape of my life.
Submit to man?
Avoid all strife?

This is not the way things are.…
Do they not know that God still sees
their secret hearts. Have they not heard?
Such darkness they claim light, perceived.
How great the night they so observe!

I wonder when His gentle hands
removed the walls to free the damned.
Who weeps the tears I never wept?
Who bears the pain I can’t confess?
Warmed by love’s light into the deep,
burning depression where I sleep,
I learn such love must understand.
He leads me by my faithless hand.

Oh, strength I find and hope, somehow.
No suffering can bind me now!
I’m free to live and free to love.
No mountain, valley, storm, or break
can ever God’s foundation shake.
Now tested by adversity …
I find no doubt can shatter me.

Dear Friends

2012-02-20T16:38:00.002-06:00

I am mute today

coveting your prayers

as silence swallows sound

Un-poetry in Dismay

2012-02-19T23:34:00.001-06:00

Life has a way of being harder than expected.
No easy answers could ever quite handle
the surface veneer of the subtly smooth
that, underneath, may be broken and battered.
What surface will I be, if ever I live
just who I am, still becoming? It's a process, too ...

Change begins with truth.
Good begins with truth.
Love begins with truth.
Hope begins with truth.
Reality begins with truth.
Life begins with truth.

It grates like slivers of sand on my soul
and I don't quite know how it could make me whole.
But in the end, it is better to die
to the surface pretension. (Don't call it a lie.)
All of the effort to seem unlike ... this
only prevents me from beginning what is.

---

This is actually just a rant ... But I have to live first what I wish others would live toward me, so ... onward!

Chronic Fatigue and Faith

2012-02-18T18:49:00.001-06:00

Christ dealt with physical consequences to his emotional state, even while he was praying,
...
and he was still without sin.

I'm meditating on the Scriptures while studying to learn the answer to an accusation I faced recently, and hoping to understand why my first response was shocked skepticism rather than guilt this time.

Is my ill health primarily because of a sinful heart attitude toward my circumstances? Hmmm ...

I think not, but that doesn't mean I won't pray and study more.

After all (setting aside the state of my health for a moment) sin is destructive on its own.

Will "trusting God more" mean I won't have to deal with significant chronic fatigue? Can I "trust away" ill health?

Should I "just trust God" and drive when I'm in a state of exhaustion ... especially knowing that the studies show the delayed response time is just as dangerous as drunkenness?

Can I do more than I do? Yes.
Will I continue to test my abilities and grow in time and energy maintenance? Yes.
Should I trust God in all things? Yes.

But there was still error in the assumptions and the presumed solution ... a fine-line crossed ... and I'm not sure I can define it.

Meeting the Unknown

2012-02-17T12:09:00.000-06:00

Beneath my feet the crumbling earth
shivers amid the death of lies
and cracks, obscene, gape wider
till they raise vast branches to the skies.
Such simulations cannot last ...
unrealized,
unfounded dreams.
The solid rock where all may stand
will not sustain fleshly esteem
upon vivid reality,
so loving, honest, just.
Eternal life beyond the breaks
-- within / without, a death to all--
remains unshaken.
Questions? Filled
by answers undeniable.

---

We cannot enter reality before the lies are dead.

Secrets

2012-02-16T12:02:00.001-06:00

She knows and waits to understand.
He knows, yet covers truth in hand.
They know and whisper in the gloom.
All know, though most deny it's true.

Yet soon the light will surely break
and blaze across the hidden-scape
revealing hearts, desires, ways.
All secrets on public display.

Redeeming Destruction - Eternal Valentine

2012-02-09T12:05:00.000-06:00

I'm tired, again, or perhaps I have always been ... this long-drawn weariness that saps away hope and consumes joy. Living on the blade of a knife, feeling the edge always against this artery or that ... motion will cause death, implied.

Yet there comes a suggestion that death is the beginning and not the end. I hesitate, frozen in this place, unwilling to give up what I cannot keep to pursue a future and a hope I cannot imagine.

I examine love, so unavailable, so distant; and nothing I can manufacture or invent by will, desire, or intention will ever bring it inside. Yet the intangible, tangibility of that which cannot be fully defined fractures the veil between shadowed reality and the vivid truth. I stand and, through the gaps, I see beauty surpassing the constructs of distortion.

I discover I'm not free.

But freedom is a relationship, not a place. It is an existence, not a circumstance. It permeates from beyond my space and time, from a dimension I don't understand.

I learn death already has me.

The existence I'm so afraid to lose is the knife upon which I am suspended. Within the veil is the prison; the seeming-reality in which I sought freedom is truly the captivity I fear. But freedom reaches in and calls my heart to face the blade, to move forward through death, to lose all I desire ... or rather to desire far more and better.

I am drawn to look beyond.

Love whispers that it has always been near, and I find that it is so ... woven threads, strands, ropes of hope that radiate when I stare into the light. So long as I am focused beyond the veil, the darkness shows ever so much darker ... but love has invaded and conquered this place. The knife is dulled; the threat has become merely a deception.

Death has been swallowed up and life is victorious.

And ... like a seed fallen into the ground to die, a new beginning is the inevitable result. The very destruction so feared ... destroys only evil and death, leaving a free and abundant life to blossom and bear fruit, up from and out of this earthly cage into the place where life is substance and death a mere vapor that passes away.

Love is so plentiful that there is too much to contain.

Pure life overflows every obstacle of deception and evil ... bringing good.

Overwhelmed, I must share this abundance of joy.

--- --- --- ---
A hard lesson I'm in the process of learning ...
--- --- --- ---

Even bitter blades wielded by
beloved enemies
are unable to cause more death
than love can overflow with life.

A hateful blade can only destroy death.

Welcome the destruction
of pride and temporal expectation,
and trust life to overflow
with eternal worth.
The veil must be destroyed
so light can pour through.

This is where we learn to
love our enemies,
and do good ...
In suffering.

Restoration pours through
from life itself,
a trustworthy reality.
Doubt might obscure,
but cannot remove the truth,
therefore, live confident.
Within truth is freedom.

---
Sharing with the Faith Barista community.

Pressure

2012-02-05T13:45:00.000-06:00

I'm trying to hold on
too much and I expand
to the breaking point,
an explosive sensation,
destructive;
and I will tear apart
until you flow,
unobstructed,
through.

A Seed Fell

2012-02-04T18:11:00.003-06:00

I was a seed,
hard-shelled and impervious,
dry and solitary,
treasured in paper,
on a shelf.

When I fell into the earth
I thought the end had come,
lost and alone in the surface;
no protection from the rain.

But as time passed
I realized true destruction
as I crumbled amid trash and twigs.
Water flowed away my skin,
peeling layer by layer
to saturate the dusty heart
I hadn't known existed.

Drowning, a wave at a time,
I was bound to the earth,
buried and trapped,
and yet ...
I tasted life amid the darkness,
pouring through particles
of mud and water.

I wondered where
these roots had been
hidden away.
Possibility.
How could I have known
life began in decomposition,
awash in liquid earth,
buried deep.

A pulse above;
I reached,
and there I found
a breath of air,
unexpected leaves ...
unfolding?

Surprising warmth.
I touched light.
Not I,
but that which grew within me,
flooded by external life,
naturally assured growth.

How could I have known,
back then,
that the husk of a heart
might ever become
a tree reaching
over the river?

Without earth ...
and water ...
and air ...
and light ...
I would only
have been
a seed.

Thoughts On Waiting

2012-01-31T18:07:00.000-06:00

Upon blade of knife
this heart remains suspended
in eternal pause

---

How many times must I realize that it is time to wait?

---

changes loom
like the rumble beneath the earth
one thousand years before a volcano

---

If time could fold,
today and tomorrow might meet
to warn one another
of paths unseen and forgotten.

---

I thought I found a place to stand
but my feet keep slipping forward.

Define Significance

2012-01-30T11:43:00.006-06:00

I will not be forgotten
though I am quite unknown,
I will not be neglected ...
for I am not alone.

My memory resides within
the maker of all worth;
wholeness forms by steady hand
to meaning he insured.

No tragedy or mockery
will ever make me less
beloved by the highest king;
and by his love I'm blessed.

I'm placed within his settings
and shaped upon his will.
No other could afflict me
yet build me stronger, still.

By every definition,
my substance solely his;
though my path may be obscure
I, full of value, live.

---

This was a difficult weekend ... strange how God pulls beauty out of emptiness and desolation.

But here is proof of his sufficiency! For the first time in a very long time I worked on canvas, using acrylic to create a backdrop and texture. I then called on my markers and pens to build the image you see above. It is titled Wind Dancing ... for more detail visit my Facebook page, where I've posted some close-ups and progress photos.

You're missing a lot in this overview image. Some of the detail can only be seen when you're face to face with the canvas ... just like knowing a heart. What you see from a distance may be beautiful, but it is only close up that you discover the intricacy of who they are ... and a deeper appreciation results.

The Unknown Adventure

2012-01-26T15:19:00.001-06:00

Today they offer adventures,
prepackaged and secure.
No unexpected or unprecedented
changes to the schedule, please.

Chasing a rainbow into open air,
trusting the fog to contain a path,
living like tomorrow isn't the point
so long as today is good and full ...

No, they don't put those on the shelf.
They grow in the wild, untamed.
To find them, leave the tended paths.
Bring a Guide who knows the wilderness.

De-cluttering the Blog

2012-01-26T15:13:00.003-06:00

I will be completely removing all Picasa-stored art and photos from this blog--due to glitches in software, unstructured filing, and transfers between corrupted computers. I am sorting, editing, and reformating older posts to create a more streamlined feel; and expect the process to take a while.

Once I have an organized system the images will return. For now, please forgive the broken image links and general disarray. If all goes well, I'll have all my posts and artworks sorted and categorized, ready for future growth.

Better to do this now and get it over with than wait and have an even worse mess when I'm busier.