On Friendship

To see the need nor pause to seek
As one all-wise in right and wrong,
Why he has proved himself so weak
Who had his moment to be strong;
To give, nor ever think to learn
What shall be given in return.

To hear a cry for aid and run
All haste from whence that summons came
To do what plainly must be done
And bother not to fix the blame;
To serve the need and never pause
To know whose fault and what the cause.

To play the friend whene'er I can
With all the power that I command,
Knowing the blow that fells a man
Is quite enough to understand;
To see him down and lift him up,
Hungry and fill his plate and cup.
-Edgar Allen Guest

YOU DESERVE IT

If my readers are still with me after yesterday's shenanigans, I want to thank you and wish you a very happy Valentine's Day and send you this rose. I created it in my art journal and then re-created it on Flickr just for everyone of you that I've grown to care about and that have encouraged me along this artful journey.

"....but there's another kind of love...one that gives
you the courage to be better than you are not less than you are. One that makes you feel that anything is possible. I want you to know that YOU
CAN HAVE THAT. I want you to HOLD OUT FOR IT. I want you to know that YOU DESERVE IT."

-quote from Nights in Rodanthe , italics mine

Keep Going

I'm enjoying the practice of these little illustrations or what would you call them?? I'm not that crazy about my little people (see yesterday's post also ) but I can evolve. I think everyone has their own unique little people. Like I can draw other people's people, and I like them better, but they are not my people. If you watch little kids draw who aren't copying somebody else, they'll have a very unique people. At some point we start trying to make our people look like other people's people and we can't- so we give up. It's just a theory of mine. I see it as a fingerprint, a signature - our own little people - sounds funny, I know but it's fun to play with. Some of us just can't give up.

I'm making chap-stiks, candles, air-fresheners, and filling tea orders today, along with all my other to-dos. I wanted to paint so that's why you're getting my little people -especially this one.

It's Harder Than She Thought

"We cannot judge ourselves by ourselves or by anyone else; there is always one
fact more in every one's life that we do not know." -Oswald Chambers

I've always truly wanted to get a total grip on this truth. But for some reason it is the easiest thing to fall into, and the hardest thing to overcome - looking at others and their circumstances and making judgments based only on my own life experiences and limited knowledge.

"It's so easy to condemn a state of things we know nothing about while we make excuses for the condition of things we ourselves live in." Oswald Chambers

I'm certain that God gives me the gift of discernment about some people and some situations not to judge them but to pray for them or to serve them. Yet, I still take this spiritual gift and use it in my own human capacity for my own self-aggrandizement - and I lose the potential for the blessing and the potential of the gift that has spiritual significance for the greater good. Does anyone else struggle with judgment and how have you overcome?