I love to celebrate my finished projects - mostly because there are so few of them. I have lots of things in progress!
You may remember that last year I did a class with Seth Apter called 52 Card Pickup. I didn't finish it on the day but hooray! I have finished all the cards.
And here are all 52 altered playing cards inside the covers.
Phil, who is a member of my church, wrote an amazing poem and he gave me permission to use part of it for this study. I placed Phil's poem over a photo of one of the backgrounds I painted last year and printed it out on photo paper.
I am using a small Dylusions journal for this study. It is one that I had already dried off stencils and stamps on odd pages. The first double page looked like this.
I put some white gesso over the writing.
Then I stuck the photo onto the page and wrote underneath.
Last week I wrote about the background to my choice of one word for 2016: Purpose although I didn't really spell it out and maybe at the end of the blog post you were wondering the connection between what you had read and my choice of word.
When I stood down from the Foundation Team at His Kingdom Come I felt a real peace about it but also a sense of loss. The formation and running of HKC had been my focus and purpose for over 12 months. And as I said in my post introducing my word: 'But giving up something that is successful without God saying what is next is bittersweet and I'm not good at just resting or not knowing what is coming next.'
I felt that I needed a purpose or a vision for what is coming next. And I seriously thought about having Vision as my word. 'Where there is no vision, the people perish ..' Proverbs 29:18 But Purpose kept coming back into my mind. I also prayed about it.
And various books and articles kept showing up which helped confirm the right choice.
I looked online for a dictionary definition of purpose
• : the reason why something is done or used : the aim or intention of something
• : the feeling of being determined to do or achieve something
• : the aim or goal of a person : what a person is trying to do, become, etc.
A friend posted a link on Facebook to a website which also led me to a book: Chazown - the book and the website
In May, Mary wrote some devotions for His Kingdom Come based on self-care and I intend to return to those and to look at the links Mary provided:
Personality test resources: I (Mary) personally prefer the Myers-Briggs personality assessment. It is very in-depth and used by many churches and employers. 16 Personalities or Typefinder Personality test
Saddleback Church, home of pastor Rick Warren has a great tool called SHAPE to help understand how you are wired.
I have signed up for One Little Word and downloaded the ebook from logos365 and will use the ideas from both to combine to make my own exploration of Purpose throughout 2016.
Listen to the words of this song.
I want to dig down into what makes me the person I am and to tell my story. To get that going I signed up for a class from Jeanne Oliver: Reflections.
I much prefer to choose a word for the year - something that I want to see more of in my life. Do you choose a word for the year? If so, why not share it in the comments below.
