Attempt

My words often escape me, especially when talking. I speak often to find that my words are jumbled and lost; my thoughts unspoken. I cannot find the words. If only I could speak and write in pictures, I would be better understood and a lot less frustrated.

Art is a communication tool for many, as well as for me. I speak through my art what I cannot put down on paper, and through terms that my spoken words cannot reveal. Creating, for me is much more than a task or an expression. I have found that when I do not create, I cannot breathe. It is as though I were being held underwater; speechless and frantic. I must create because it is the language tool through which my soul speaks, one that has been granted to me out of the image and essence of my Creator. It is only by Him and, through Him that I am what I am and can do what I do. My ultimate desire is that I would be breathing my every breath to give Him credit for what is rightfully His. I am His.

I have been creating ever since I was little. I am an only child, strong-willed, and raised in a single-parent household, where I had to find my own entertainment to keep myself occupied. The television often bored me, and I could never sit still long enough to read enough books to satisfy my itching desire to find myself. I would often spend hours in the living room, in the basement, or in my bedroom making things to suffice the creative thirst I had within me. As I grew older the raw desire to create morphed into something new--a desire to create and find beauty.

Looking back now, I see this paired with my increasing desire in my teenage years to find God. I longed for something that was pure, unadulterated, perfect, flawless, and beautiful--all things that I began to realize I wasn't and could never be sufficient. Even though I kept them separate until a few years ago, my art and my relationship with God mirrored each other. They were the same. The things that I was searching for in God, I was searching for in my artwork.

I am now finally realizing that creating is not a job or even just a talent, but that it is exercising the very existence I have been given. I am created in the image of my God. He is the Creator.

I am breathing.