happy

The Art of Cake

Art, creativity, family, happy, memoir, mixed media painting, painting, Redemption, wonder
day 6, blueberry filled cream cheese frosted cake

Simply to create, I decided to paint one thing every day and I started with cake.

No plans for the works on paper, painted with ease and allowable error and then a scribble signature, set it aside.

Creativity for the sake of creativity and I guess to spread the word about my suggestion others get creative in their own way and also, share a slice of cake or two with someone special on January 28th.

“Cake with your Mama Day”

began on a whim. I wasn’t especially sad and I’m not sure I really wanted cake. It just seemed fitting to eat cake on my mother’s birthday to make it less heavy and more happy.

My mama passed away two days before she was to turn 70 over ten years ago.

Before my daughter became a mama, we had cake one day downtown after work. It was the sweetest day.

Mama was a professional for many years and then, although not at all lucrative, she began to bake cakes for people, the lusciously decadent cakes only her family had known her for.

And something changed in her, I saw her stand before a red velvet cake about to be delivered and I saw love on her face.

Her countenance reflected the gift of being a maker of only something she could create.

Her cake business was art.

So, every year, now on the closest Saturday to January 30th, I invite others into the #cakewithyourmamaday and for the past couple of years, my dear friend Jeanne at Juniper in Ridge Spring, SC (a very cool and yummy place) joins me in promoting the celebration…the invitation to remember your mama or anyone who mama’s or has mama’d you.

Or anyone at all, together sharing.

Friends gather together and dip their forks into cake, conversations about life, love, hope and happiness happen over shared slices of cake.

Cake with Your Mama Day is more an invitation to joy than just a day of enjoying dessert.

So, if you follow me on Insta, you’ve seen I’m painting a cake a day as I’ve come to understand more why this day is special.

I believe my mama understands my desire to keep painting. She sees the sweet release achieved by making something as she saw it in her country kitchen pulling the pound cakes from the oven. She sees and is smiling down on me over a slice or two of cake.

I hope you’ll have cake on January 28th.

Share your photos with us all on #cakewithyourmamaday

Be creative.

Again, Begin

bravery, contentment, happy, hope, Redemption, Vulnerability, walking

This afternoon, I picked my pace up, legs heavy and feet oddly light.

I said to myself, “a minute or two, breathe.”

I felt the lifting up of my feet over knotted up roots bursting through the granite paved trail.

There was a moment I wondered who may be watching. Me, the fast walker turned awkward jogger longed for a trail in a forest, not a planned community of homes.

Still, I sprinted in a way a woman over sixty does and then I slowed feeling even though I was walking again,

My walking was making a greater difference than before.

I’ve been doing some bravery required things, things like being 62 and running again.

Who decides it’s too late, too long avoided to try again…

To run the way you’d run if you’d decided you could way back then?

I think I’ll pick it up again tomorrow.

I saw myself three years ago, lighter in disposition, easier in my movement and somehow optimistic in expression.

Again, I shall be less weighed down again.

A minute ago, I read something that felt like betrayal. I’m moving on, letting that go.

Setting my gaze steady and thinking about moving this body of mine forward and less weighted down.

Less heavy.

Again.

Childlike

Abuse Survivor, Art, bravery, confidence, contentment, courage, happy, hope, love, painting, Peace, Redemption, self-portrait, Vulnerability, wisdom
Lisa Anne

I keep staring at the girl inside the woman. Many will see somber.

I see solid.

Most will question the stare, wonder why so angry.

I see strength, surrender and a commitment to be very sweet to myself.

Little girl bangs was the style or I guess, just easy.

No fussing over Lisa Anne trying to keep up with bows or barrettes.

No ponytails, no braids.

Just a border of brown above two pools of blue

And a pool of freckles

Now age spots and crinkles.

Acceptance

Believing in the child within

Loving the woman she became.

I keep staring into this face.

I’d call it grace or something else.

Can’t decide.

Must be because it’s love.

Noticed on Tuesday

bravery, confidence, contentment, courage, Faith, happy, hope, memoir, painting, patience, Peace, Vulnerability, wisdom, wonder, writing

Isn’t it predictable that I’d love the phrase “noticing God”, incorporate it into bios and hashtags and yet, catch myself off guard when a phrase of truth and clarity comes

And I decide to hold on to it?

“God is always paying attention (to me).”

Followers and collectors, listeners, potential buyers of my art and my words

Caused me to be weary over compiling them, the not yet thousands enough.

So, I left that little compilation of numbers alone

And continued to go on

On my own.

Noticing highlighter colored rye fields and yellow flowers becoming fluffy dandelions.

I noticed and celebrated the simplicity of a simple notice.

“Thank you, Lisa Anne Tindal!

I appreciate all your inspiration and insight!” M.H. (a brilliant author)

A gift given to me on her birthday.

“Isn’t it ironic?” A.M.

Or maybe not.

Maybe it’s God.

The same God who provided water to a slave girl trying to escape and a woman enslaved by her patterns with men.

Same God who notices my need to be noticed and says “I see, see with me.”

“Then God opened Hagar’s eyes, and she saw a well full of water. She quickly filled her water container and gave the boy a drink.”
‭‭Genesis‬ ‭21:19‬ ‭NLT‬

“But sir, you don’t have a rope or a bucket,” she said, “and this well is very deep. Where would you get this living water?”
‭‭John‬ ‭4:11‬ ‭NLT‬‬

It’s not popular to be weary over popularity.

I wonder who else feels the exhaustion of self-promotion and longs to simply keep finding, sharing and creating…

To be thirsty not for notice.

Being light.

Because

God is paying attention to you.

In the sweet spot of knowing you’re noticed so that you’re not thirsting for notice of others and more often than before not as thirsty.

Fill my cup, Lord.

I lift it up to your pink sky Tuesday morning telling me I’m seen loved and known.

Noticed on Tuesday morning,

The Broken Bowl

Abuse Survivor, Art, bravery, contentment, courage, Faith, freedom, happy, hope, memoir, Redemption, Stillness, testimony, Trust, Vulnerability, waiting, wisdom, wonder

Over several weeks, I sat at the desk in my art room and pieced together a broken bowl. It had fallen to the counter as I put dishes away at my daughter’s home, a loud crash and pieces and chunks of pretty white with raised polka dots was destroyed.

Instantly, I thought “Here’s your chance, try kintsugi.” (the ancient art of repairing broken pottery with gold)

I laid out the pieces, gathered gorilla glue and thick gold paint and began. It couldn’t be rushed.

It was a thing of patience and phases, requiring me to allow the repair of one section before beginning the next.

Covered in a cloth in case my daughter stopped by, I continued imperfectly because of missing pieces, adding blue from a broken intentionally cup for fill ins and well, just because it was pretty.

Finished, it became a gift to her for Valentine’s Day.

Last week, I heard words that were not new,

“We live in a broken world.”

The pastor added with emphasis in his message on “expectations” and I received the familiar phrase differently.

It was time.

Have you considered yourself broken by life? Maybe you do now. I began to think of other catchy phrases like “broken and beautiful or beautifully broken” and pondered how we can be both.

I sat in the sanctuary between my strong son-in-law and a very large, burly man who sang every word to every song and sighed like a little boy at the passages about God’s love, no condemnation anymore and other promises because of God’s spirit in us.

I thought, “I’m not broken, after all, all along it’s been this world and what it caused others to do to me.”

“Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.”
‭‭Isaiah‬ ‭43:19‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Journaled on Monday:

This world is broken and so, things that happen or happened may determine you to be broken. But remember, you are whole, made whole fully and even more whole and unbroken as you allow yourself to understand the difference. You are not broken. The world still is; but no, you are not broken, not you. Not broken made beautiful as much as simply beautiful, redemptively beautiful, completely so.

To say I’m in need of my Heavenly Father, my Savior, His Spirit in me is not saying I’m broken, it’s more of a humble recognition of my identity now, in light of then.

God caused me to consider self-condemnation in my sleep last night. I’d been thinking of the practice of Lent and intentional changes. God had a better idea, told me what I really needed to let go of is self-condemnation.

The thought danced in my mind all night and I woke to consider it and journaled.

Self-condemnation turns me inward, causes me to fixate on my failures. Self-condemnation is not a healthy or even godly self-assessment. Instead, it’s an obsession with myself in a way that’s tricky, makes you think it’s a companion to humility.

Humility acknowledges with reverence the repaired places you were broken, made new, places you were unable and now have courageous abilities. Humility shines a soft light on the places you were weakened by wrong, but now are allowing yourself to grow strong.

Humility says “thank you”. Self-condemnation says you’ll always be “too far gone”.

Happy Place (detail)

I gifted the bowl and later sent my daughter a note I’d saved in “Notes”.

Kintsugi is the ancient art of fixing broken pottery with gold. … Kintsugi reminds us that something can break and yet still be beautiful, and that, once repaired, it is stronger at the broken places. This is an incredible metaphor for healing and recovery from adversity

Strange gifts from me don’t surprise my children and they know the unspoken truth of most of my gifts being gifts with a deeper meaning. No need for spoken explanations, just hope for little contributions to my legacy of love always.

And hope that I see this bowl, others who pass by or stand in her kitchen pause and maybe take a deep breath and rest assured.

We’re not broken anymore. We are beautiful and slightly imperfect, yet made new.

“For he satisfies the longing soul, and the hungry soul he fills with good things.”
‭‭Psalm‬ ‭107:9‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Such a Love, Pristine

Abuse Survivor, Angels, Art, birds, confidence, contentment, courage, Faith, happy, memoir, painting, patience, Peace, Prayer, Redemption, Salvation, surrender, Trust, Vulnerability, walking, wonder, writing

I found two feathers walking yesterday and then a third. The first pair were mostly grey and I held tightly to them as I walked. No pockets in my clothes, I held on, clutching them gently. I rounded the corner to the steep hill and decided to drop them, said a prayer of 3 words, “art and writing” and walked on.

Walking on as I decided against more hills, I let my feet take me towards home. I glanced down in the grassy border and spotted the third feather, a white one. Pristine and soft as velvet, I gathered it up. It was pure and undamaged in a way I’d never seen. I walked on home with great wonder over the assurance that my 3 word prayer had been heard.

I added the feather to my collection, cherishing the words of victory and the promises of Jesus.

Shortly after, a friend I hadn’t spoken to in many months called to say she had an opportunity for me to speak to a group of women in October. “Would I pray about it?” she asked. Two thoughts linger, there’s that open door and I am willing, not sure fully able, but willing. A third, October gives me even more time for courage, grace and healing, God’s wise provision.

“All who are victorious will be clothed in white. I will never erase their names from the Book of Life, but I will announce before my Father and his angels that they are mine.”
‭‭Revelation‬ ‭3:5‬ ‭NLT‬‬

What we see as too damaged or defeated in our hopes to keep moving forward, God sees as victory for us, a peaceful one.

I pray you keep pursuing this peace or that you seek it if you never have. I pray for you my prayer for me.

Lord, help me keep walking towards you, towards peace. Help me to remember I am yours.

My Father’s World

bravery, confidence, contentment, coronavirus, courage, Faith, fear, happy, heaven, hope, love, mercy, Peace, Prayer, Salvation, Stillness, Trust, Vulnerability, waiting

“Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.”
‭‭John‬ ‭15:4‬ ‭ESV‬‬

Today, the sun was bright in South Carolina, the Labrador was content but it seemed wrong not to walk him.

I’d gone to church, kinda worried but masked and attended, immersed myself in the rich voices of the singers and I joined in the emotional prayer offered by our pastor.

I opened my palm to heaven in agreement. It felt weak and timid, still, I felt myself hoping …

God please help us all.

I heard the ache in the pastor’s tone. I wondered if he might cry.

A prayer about pandemic and the fears about our country.

Every one is fighting hard battles and there seems no bunker in which to hunker down til the war is done.

My walk that was supposed to be a jog in this time of resolution decided to be take it easy, take the dog.

On the trail I spotted the ebony berries. I remembered the sermon I heard and the one my cousin suggested.

I thought if those berries weren’t on the branches they’d be dried up, bitter and wrinkled.

I thought of the two Sunday sermons.

One about remaining and the other, flourishing.

One talking about connectedness and abiding and the other talking about planting ourselves in the place most likely to keep us growing, make us strong.

And I’m thinking now, I’m staying close, even growing closer and as odd as it may seem if it came from my very own lips.

God is still good and he’s about to become good for so many more.

And my thoughts on that?

Welcome friends.

Welcome to a life led by your Heavenly Father.

Welcome to a life that makes no human sense, welcome to God in you, a quiet sense when nothing makes sense, a whisper in the breeze, a pausing to notice simple berries against green leaves and be reminded.

God is near. I am loved.

Continue and believe.

Planted seeds are about to burst forth. The season to come is one of sweet and miraculous growth.

If you’re curious and need more of these Sunday words I heard:

Search YouTube for TrueNorth Church and Seacoast Church. You can hear both sermons.

God is still good. Be assured.

Eyes to See

confidence, contentment, courage, curiousity, Forgiveness, freedom, grace, happy, hope, Peace, praise, Vulnerability, wonder

“Ears to hear and eyes to see— both are gifts from the Lord.”
‭‭Proverbs‬ ‭20:12‬ ‭NLT‬‬

It’s not spectacular, the little place where the back porch meets the grassy yard bordered by flowers that can withstand the heat.

There’s no manicured touch and the green of the lantana, the clematis and the wild lavender flowers is mingled with the green of a weed that refuses to go away.

Still, the sun peeks through the tall pines and it lays down a bridge on the thick grass.

I glance past the magenta colored roses and I sense God saying all will be okay.

I sense His spirit in my response to nature, in response to seeing.

Like the sight on Tuesday, a woman at the intersection in a dull colored old minivan.

I turned to see her as she waited for the light to turn green. I noticed her windows down, her long loose hair and although it wasn’t sunny, her aviator shades.

All alone in her car on her way somewhere, she shimmied her shoulders and tilted her head and then raised both arms up high and sang to no one listening.

I was awed by her hope.

I went on my way and glanced in the rear view to see her switch lanes quickly in between two others and I wondered where she was going.

I decided she wasn’t in a hurry.

Just determined.

Just ready.

She seemed to be joyously resilient, come what may

she was still going.

The sight of her, of the sunrise every morning, of the geese crossing the busy road somehow quite sure the cars would stop and wait, it all makes me certain in believing.

That this time is a season, a bridge to joy, a bridge to contentment not from without, but within.

I pray we all notice more, the simple steady markers for hope and the unexpected ones that reveal an abandoned joy!

Throw our arms up and sing along to no one at all.

Continue On

Art, bravery, confidence, courage, freedom, happy, hope, mixed media painting, painting, Peace, Trust, Vulnerability

Just a thought, if there were not in us, this inner spark, a fervor to run farther, a desire to see little things that set our souls to trust once and so we go looking again…would there not be a source of that motivation?

How can we say we were not purposefully created when we seek, despite all this fear and all encompassing strife, to feel that fire again?

I added color to the somber piece I called melancholy. Changed its name again. Now, it is finished and the name is settled, “Returning to Rest”.

I’ve given my available art a home of its own.

Visit here if you like:

https://lisaannetindal.com

It’s brand new and the meeting of a long angst causing goal. It wasn’t as difficult as I believed, it was just a matter of not quitting, of looking for the tiny light forward and continuing.

Continue and believe.

There’s no reason to allow the fire within you to burn to ground covered ashes because the world appears to be burning itself down.

I still have hope. Hope that endures.

Sing Your Song

confidence, contentment, Faith, freedom, happy, hope, Peace, praise, Redemption, rest, Thanksgiving, Trust, Unity, Vulnerability, wonder

I heard a familiar tune from the hallway. Must’ve been stuck in his head from the Sunday service we watched on the TV in the den. Neither of us sang along. Church at home still weird.

I told him, I heard you can’t be sad or angry if you’re humming or whistling.

No response really.

But, he did resume his whistling as he walked away.

“Nobody loves me like you love me, Jesus!” Chris Tomlin

I woke up with this lyric. God wakes me up with songs some mornings. I think it’s sweet. I’m not a singer except in my car or the shower. I’m not even one to sing loud if someone’s in the car with me. I’m too self-conscious to raise my hands in church but I have found myself lately walking through my neighborhood with my palm to heaven, have driven down the road with one hand lifted in praise.

Maybe it’s God saying I know you’re longing to sing and you’ll be singing very soon. Maybe it’s just a truth I need.

Truth is, nobody knows me and loves me like Jesus. I can tell him my deepest regrets and He is gentle, not a harsh critic or a negative reply.

More importantly I can tell Him the sweetest possibilities I hope for and He knows the significance. He’s not surprised by my surprise over me being blessed in some way, chosen for something that is a deep deep longing, so deep a desire it’s kept secret.

But, He knows.

I stand in awe of His amazing ways.

“Nobody loves me like You love me, Jesus
I stand in awe of Your amazing ways
I worship You as long as I am breathing
God, You are faithful and true…”Chris Tomlin