Promises

This is a picture I created last week out of the depths of my soul. I've been going to an Art Therapy group *bliss* and at the first session this was the image I arrived at.

Me locked in a dark abandoned room full of the dust of broken dreams. On the wall, a mirror, cracked.

On the shelf, a jar. A beautiful jar full of....something. Something precious. Something that held the key to my escape.

I'm curious, said the instructor. What is in the jar?
Try painting it out this week and see what comes.
So I painted the jar.

Still not sure what is inside. But I somehow know that what is within doesn't come from me. Is not dependant on me. And it holds the answers I need.

Praying for my Troubled Son one night, I found myself saying, "You promised me God..."
And suddenly it clicked. The jar contains my promises.
The words that have been revealed to my heart from Heaven.

I took my little painting along to the next session and waited to see what would unfold.

The exercise: Choose from a list of hebrew names for God. Pick one that "jumps out" at you and represent it on the page.

My eye was drawn immediately to Jehovah Shalom.
God, my Peace.

I drew the word in muted shades of pastel. A cloud, a mist of peace that I longed to envelope me.

The next step, draw myself. Where I am right now.

Tied up in knots, I was. Anxiety for my Troubled Son. Worry. Fear.

Now I was instructed to lay the two pictures side by side and ask myself the question: What would a God of Peace want to give to me, say to me, do for me today?

Peace would undo the knots.

Suddenly I had a sense of the rope being untied and stretched out to form a hammock.

I saw myself sleeping, resting in that hammock.

And as I started to draw it out, I found that I knew what I was resting on.

Promises.

In particular this promise. Given to me twenty years ago, long long before I ever had children, or even a husband. A promise that God would show himself to my children and make himself real to them.

This promise I can claim for my Boy.

And have Peace, knowing that God keeps his promises.

xx