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Continued...
So while I'm not trying to condemn anyone who is dating, I am trying to make sure your relationship with God is strong. People aren't perfect. They make mistakes. Wait for God’s timing. Ask God to prepare you for a relationship. It doesn’t mean waiting forever. It’s actually really exciting. While you’re praying and waiting, you can get to know God better. You can experience a deeper and closer relationship with Him.
A relationship isn't about what YOU can get out of it; it's what you can put into it. It needs to be selfless not selfish. ONLY God can train you for that. ONLY God.
~*~
Rachel P is a 16-year-old Beauty & Fashion Vlogger on Youtube. Always ready to encourage girls to be modest with their fashion and teach them that the real beauty comes from within.
Check out her stellar wardrobe advice on pg. 50!
What do you think of when you think about art?
Some of you may be really good at it and think about how much you enjoy drawing, painting, sculpting, etc. Others of you may feel that you're no good at it, and imagine laughably simple stick-figure doodles in the margins of your favorite spiral-bounds. Still others of you may be picturing (no pun intended) gallery walls decked with masterpieces by Rembrandt, Degas, and Picasso. While I consider all of those things art, it also means something very different and much deeper for me.
Almost two years ago, I was trying to make plans for my future after high-school and was in a little bit of a crisis. I wanted to go to college, but at that point, because of various factors, including financial troubles, I wasn't sure I'd be able to, or, if I was, that I'd be going where I really wanted to go. Although this certainly isn't the worst thing a girl can go through, at that time of life, it was really stressful and I was concerned with it a lot of the time. One day, feeling overwhelmed, I grabbed a box of my sister's pastels, a huge sheet of paper, and sat on the floor of my bedroom.
I'm no artist, but I drew. I sketched out what I was feeling—a simplistic, faceless figure to represent myself, kneeling. I filled in the shape with blue as if it were overwhelming me and shaded in the background furiously with frustrated red that surrounded everything. And then I took a pencil and drew—in the upper left corner of the page—a hand, palm upward, fingers slightly curled, reaching down towards my kneeling figure and surrounded with a glow of yellow. It was God's hand.
Drawing that picture didn't solve all of my problems, obviously. But it did do something for me—it gave me some peace. It felt so good to express in color how I was feeling, what was happening to me. And it felt even better to add that hand, to jolt myself with the little reminder that “Oh, yeah. There's this guy looking out for me.”
I've done the same thing numerous times since. Whenever I'm in emotional or mental turmoil, I find a piece of paper and something to draw with (something colorful, like markers or crayons or pastels) and I represent on that page how I feel, and then, at the end of it, draw in some sort of representation of my King.
There have also been times when I've sat down with a journal and scrawled out all my fury towards life and people who are hurting me; and when I do that, somehow, by the end of the entry, I'm praising His glory. I think there are probably ways to do this through any of the fine arts—song, dance, film-making, whatever.
Try this sometime, no matter how terrible you think your art is—making something beautiful is not the point. In fact, the point is to scribble out how ugly you're feeling or how ugly the world around you seems at that moment; and then, when you've gotten that all out of your system, to add something to that picture that maybe you can't see in real life. A hand, a cross, a beam of light, a lion—whatever symbolizes God for you. Because, admit it: we all have those time when everything seems awful, and try as we might, we can't see Him there with us. And maybe the only way we can really make ourselves see Him in the situation is to draw it out so that we can physically see Him, even if it's just a symbol. It may be unconventional, and it may seem a little strange at first, but I encourage you to give it a shot next time that you're feeling down.
Besides—if the creator of the Universe made us, then why can't the creation of some art heal us?
Princess Training, Part 3:
The Art of Healing
By Noelle Hilpert
Photo by A. Pasquier
"Never let love & faithfulness leave you. Tie them around your neck; write them on the tablet of your heart."
Proverbs 3:3