As I sat staring at the unfinished canvas in front of me, my shoulders slumped, and the $90.00 brush dropped from my limp hand. I was a failure! It was time I took off my blinders and faced that fact. If you have ever gotten to that place in your life where you just want to crawl into a dark hole and shut out the world, you will possibly understand how I was feeling.
I had barged my way into the world of art rather suddenly just a couple of years before this. I had always believed I was an artist, even though I had never had any formal training. I knew I was creative. There were so many things that my dyslexia made difficult for me, but drawing and painting was something I excelled at, and I loved to prove that to myself.
I wanted to prove it to the world, too, so when I was handed a check for $1000.00 for one of my first oil paintings, I was soaring. Everything else, including my writing, was either completely set aside, or specifically used to propel my new career in art forward.
My husband was as eager as I was to see me succeed, and so we opened our new business, Grey Bruce Art World. We showcased other artists, gave lessons, sold art supplies and of course, prominently displayed my work. I did everything I could to promote myself. I wrote a monthly opinion column in an Art Magazine, I featured an artist from our gallery regularly in a weekly regional magazine, and I had a monthly segment in a local TV show. On top of that, we spent thousands on advertising.
But there was something important in all of this promoting that I had failed to take into account; or more accurately, some-One important. God had a different plan for our lives, and we had been ignoring it. God had called my husband to the ministry many years before, but we had been postponing it. Now the Lord was saying it was time, but I was too wrapped up in my plans to be able to hear, and my husband, even though he had heard the call, wanted to please me, and therefore said nothing to discourage me.
Moving forward without God's blessing was a huge mistake. Before the year was up, I had to acknowledge my inability to make it on my own. We had lost everything. The hard part was knowing that all my promotional efforts had been useless. I couldn't bring in the customers no matter how hard I tried.
The final spike to the coffin of my pride came when the group I had formed to organize an art tour made a decision about my gallery. I was expected to continue to be the biggest promoter of the tour, but my gallery was not to be included in the tour. I knew that I would never be part of the elite artists of the community. I just did not fit the mold, and I was mortified. It was a slap in the face, and I reeled under the sting of the blow.
But God was there, and I was ready to listen. Have you ever noticed that it's when you are at the end of yourself, the still small Voice becomes clearer? It happened that way for me. It was a pivotal point for both of us. We started following the leading of the Holy Spirit and our lives became blessed. We gave up the business and my husband followed the call on his life.
The struggles of our art business seemed a thing of the past. I still painted occasionally but had stopped trying to promote myself. God was always there and provided for us financially in miraculous ways, so when the thought came that I should go back to writing my mom's story, I pushed it aside as a temptation to try to make a name for myself again.
When I had started writing “Susie's Story”, my dreams of writer fame had been high. My night school teacher was highly impressed and tremendously encouraging. I had been buoyed up by the prospect of being a published author. But after the first four chapters and a few rejections, I was ready to switch to the new art field where I had already made my first $1000.
But now, when I thought of going back to writing, the memory of my failure, with its allure of fame, made me cautious. My niece, a published author, was telling me that the publishing company that she was writing for was creating a new series. They were looking for exactly the type of book I was writing. Was this another temptation to put myself forward? I couldn't let that happen.
I talked to my husband. “Think of it this way,” he said. “Your paintings never actually led anyone to Christ that I know of. Your story could.”
I asked the Lord what I should do. He answered me with a passage of scripture. It said to tell your children and your children's children what the Lord has done, and to do it in parables (stories). Susie's Story was about my mother's eventful life growing up in Russia during the revolution and I knew the Lord was saying he wanted me to write it. But because of my experience at Art World, I knew that everything I did would have to be directed by Him and that He would get all the glory. My dreams of self-importance were gone.
When I finished the book I queried the publisher. The reply was not what I had expected. It said they liked my book, but they had discontinued that series and couldn't use it. What had happened?
Had I made a mistake? Had I wasted my time? But no. I could be a failure, but God was not. This was His book. I had listened to Him, and He had confirmed to me that it was part of His plan for me.
I decided to self publish, and amazingly, doing publicity God's way, with a whole new mental approach, it sold. But of far more importance, it did lead people to Christ. It made a lasting impression on lives, something of far more importance than fame or any best seller list in the whole wide world!
Years later, we did start another, different kind of business which the Lord directed us to, but that's a whole other exiting story for another time.
For the previous post see: Goodbyes.
