... and slow to get angry." [END QUOTE]

Just a thought for the day.

I sometimes forget that I'm missing out on a chance to learn because I'm talking instead of listening.  I think I'll practice listening, consciously, this weekend.  Catch my tendency to talk and choose to give other people around me space to talk.  I'm interested to see what I will learn.

This author ~ James ~ that I quote here,
was the brother of Jesus Christ of Nazareth.

James wrote a letter that is regarded as a small book.  He had a lot of practical things to say.

The US holiday of Thanksgiving will be here in a couple of days.  It is a time of special reflectioin for me, because I was not expected to have so many of them.  As some of you already know, a few years ago I was told I was dying of cancer.  Color became a very special symbol to me during that dreadful time.

I read something today that was an interesting discovery.  The same thing that turned my life around was one of the "keen observations" of the fictional character Sherlock Holmes.  In the book THE ADVENTURES OF THE NAVAL TREATY, the genius detective said this:

[quote] = "There is nothing in which deduction is so necessary as in religion,' said he, leaning with his back against the shutters...
'Our highest assurance of the goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the flowers.

All other things, our powers, our desires, our food, are really necessary for our existence in the first instance.  But this rose is an extra.  Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it,  It is only goodness which gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to hope from the flowers." [END QUOTE]

One of my favorite sayings is, "Thank God thorns have roses."

Life is filled with little extras -- gifts from a loving God that enrich our lives.  Take time to notice them today!  This is a quote from my devotional book.  It fell open "god-incidentally" (my word for it)to the page in my devotion book for October 15, and it caught my eye.  The above is a quote from it, and I thought worth sharing with you.

If you don't know my story

about the rose,,,and you have a LONG

time to spend reading...This is how I came to the same reasoning as Sherlock Holmes.  It's a bit of an autobiography. [a book about a person's life, written by that person] ~ I haven't written a dA journal in some time, so this makes up for that.  I journal privately twice a day, evening and morning, as "I do not live by bread alone" ~ something Jesus Christ said.


A few years ago I was told I was dying of cancer.  During that battle is when I was

  “touched with color”.

Until the diagnosis, I had never allowed myself the time to explore my artistic urges. I had ambitious goals that led me always in other directions.  Even in high school my extracurricular creative activities revolved around theater.  With a sense of a great honor, I joyously and  fearlessly took on the role of Anne Frank when I was 15.  But the thought of walking into an art class terrified me.  In theater you hide yourself, in art you reveal yourself for all the world to see.

When I read my cancer diagnosis report, which proposed that I would not live any longer than two more years, I was surprised by what popped into my head. “But I’d always wanted to paint, someday”.  I believed the paper.  A definitive report  I held in my hands  was announcing that my SOMEDAY would never arrive. I entered the battle for my life, with surgery and intensive chemo.

Then other losses poured into my life.    Almost everything I had ever depended on or hoped for was destroyed.

  I still believed in the  promises Jesus Christ had made.  I remained confident that He would prepare a place for me -- on the other side of a casket or urn.   I never stopped believing that He had risen from the dead.  I had spent years studying the Bible and always found that it led me to new and amazing things.   However, I could no longer brush aside the emotional, ultimate question.

IS God good?   Why is there evil?

Belief in His goodness had always been the foundation of my existence. As I Iooked at the horrors in our fallen world, I struggled to find meaning in life.  I felt the core of my heart crumbling away.  I was going to die of a broken heart, more than from the disease and violence I had experienced.  Some people have called this the "dark night of the soul”.

It was more tormenting than every other personal loss and pain I had experienced.  Where my theology could not withstand, God began to use color to speak love into my heart. Color lifted me out of my physical and emotional dying. The beauty of color reassured me of God’s goodness.  I had a very personal sense of His presence, and He began to show me how much I was still depending on my own strength.

I now grow daily in this walk with Him where I rest in Him.  A little at a time, I move into a more calm, trusting and thankful state of being.

I am able to accept my own doubts without feelings of guilt.  Humans can’t explain why. We are not wise enough to grasp God’s purposes. My confidence that God loves all human beings is leading me into what the Bible calls "a peace that surpasses understanding".  He has a purpose in what happens to each one of us.

COLOR itself became the symbol of “beauty for ashes”—which became the banner over my life.   As an adult, I finally took my first art class and something unexpected happened. I arbitrarily chose a community watercolor class.  I finally broke down my wall of fear about this longing to make art.  Because of the role color had played in my life, I find special significance in what followed.

From my first class, there was almost a life force flowing from my paintbrush. I sold paintings out of my first classes, to my complete astonishment.

It is my hope that my art will bring more beauty into the world, and comfort to others.  God’s art, in this colorful world, became a powerful source of healing and restoration in my life.  My cancer is now in complete remission.

I want to continue to explore the soul language of art, by treasuring the creativity of others, and exploring all that is within me.  Through my own, and the art of others, I get in touch with the full range of my emotions.

Some of my art is melancholy, even gothic, as I experience and process the emotions I tried to deny and avoid.  Denying emotions, or any reality of life, has destructive consequences.  I am learning to face, and walk through all that I feel, with honesty.   I am confident now that, however dark it may be, this world is still inhabited by the King of Kings.

The spectrum of light that our eyes are pernitted to see, what we call color, is more than able to drive back the darkness.  I don't have to understand HOW.  I strive to allow it to be the lamp unto my feet, and light upon my path  ~ from a Psalm in the Judeo-Christian Bible.  One of the things Jesus called Himself was "the light of the world".  Jesus communicates in a personal way to me through many means.

I am now LONG past that “expiration date” of two years—which had once been stamped across my life by a cancer diagnosis.  Though an appointment with death still waits for me, as it does for each one of us, I currently have no hint as to when it will be.

   I hope to spend every precious day I have, cooperating with God by using my unique gifts -- to receive His love and share it with others.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING to all my friends around the world.

I am thankful for you.   DeviantArt is a wonderful place for providing this opportunity.  People in the past could not have imagined how easy it would become to make friends from all around the globe, while sitting in your jammies [pajamas] in your own little corner of the world.

This link leads to a journal I wrote last fall.  [link] that journal I spoke about the things God was doing in my life, and that I would share as He continued to work in my life, through my journals and art, in the "future".  I included some of my art in that old journal, to help me express what I was feeling then.

  It was a WOW kind of year.  God's love, and what there is to learn about Him is like Niagra Falls.  There is just no end to it.  I feel like I've met Him for the first time, over and over.  How He loves me,
and shows me that,

just keeps surprising me.

This was my FIRST --> <-- art journal page, EVER

which people in DeviantArt helped me find the courage to make and share last year.

Naturally there are a lot of words in the artist comments under that art journal.

  I first got a used laptop not so long ago JUST for writing.  If you hadn't already noticed, I LIKE TO WRITE A LOT.

I had no intentions of getting messed up with the internet ~ or any of

THAT stuff.

I have covered a lot of ground with computers too!

  ...Computers were my least favorite thing. Not anymore.  How things can change.