Thursday, January 10, 2013

Turning Over a New Page



Last Christmas I spent a surprising amount of time and energy shopping for the perfect art journal to give my seven-year-old daughter, Madelyn. The girl has a natural talent for drawing. After finding just the right book, I brought it home and wrapped it excitedly. What a joyful moment it was to watch her rip away its wrapping paper on Christmas morning with a beaming snaggletoothed smile.

“Oh mom, I love it!” she exclaimed, carefully looking it over and flipping through its blank pages.

She ran her hand over the journal’s sparkly black cover, studying the embossed image of the Eiffel Tower. She sat down to draw in it right away, grabbing up a handful of carefully selected colored pencils. 

Only half an hour later, she brought it to me crying.

“What’s the matter?” I asked in shock.

With tears flowing, she handed me the book and whimpered, “I don’t like my picture, and I can’t tear it out."

Curious, I looked down and discovered that she had started drawing not on the book's first loose page, but rather the inside of the front cover. Seeing the predicament, I argued that the picture was quite good to be sure. I further explained that the point of an art journal was to show how you progress over time while experimenting with techniques and mediums. She wasn’t having it. Her crocodile tears became a heartfelt gushing fountain.

Finally, I gave in to my little lady in distress, cut out a piece of blank paper, and glued it over the adorable picture she disapproved of. Problem solved.

Or so I thought. The next day, I entered the kitchen to find a pile of torn out art rejects littering the area around Madelyn’s chair. And there she was, once again, sobbing over her journal. 

Madelyn's art rejects did not make the cut.
 
At that moment, her frustration resonated with me, and as I looked into her big hazel eyes, I understood where she was coming from. She only wanted to keep the best of the best.  By tearing out the pictures that she felt didn’t accurately reflect her finest work, she always had a clean canvas on which to start over. Recognizing her fear of displaying something less than perfect for others to see, my heart longed to impart to her the knowledge that all of her sincere efforts were valuable as guide-stones, and by no means were they cause for shame.

“I want to show you something,” I said gently, as I grabbed her hand and led her over to the bookshelf. I reached up high and pulled down an old journal covered in black velvet.

“This used to be mine,” I said, "and as you can see, I liked to draw and write in it, too. Some of my work looks silly now, but I like keeping it, so I can see how much I have changed over the years.”

Madelyn began intently analyzing the contents of my journal, and her tears faded away into distant memory. After inspecting, admiring, questioning and giggling at my handiwork, she agreed that she would try to keep the remaining pages of her own art journal intact. She was wise enough to even do a trial run of her next drawing on a piece of printer paper. It was a picture of the Eiffel Tower with colorful dragonflies buzzing all around. “I think this one should be the first picture in the journal,” she decided. So we cut it out and pasted it in.
               
Later that evening, as I was telling the kids about the impending New Year and putting up the new calendar with all of its pristine pages, Madelyn’s journal once again crossed my mind. There really is something exciting about a new year full of unspoiled opportunities, like an art book full of unblemished pages. But I had to remind myself to carry forward all that I had learned from past failures, so that the year at hand wasn’t spent repeating them.

As your turn through the chapters of your story this year, I pray you enjoy the blank slate each new day offers, build on the lessons learned from your journey thus far, and write yourself an ever-more brilliant future.

Here's to creating a masterpiece. Happy 2013!

Another keeper! Art by Madelyn Conn.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Happy New Year!

Beauty surrounds us at all times, sometimes you just have to hunt it down.
Happy New Year!
Content and Photo by Rebecca Conn
Beauty surrounds us at all times, sometimes you just have to hunt it down.

Happy hunting, and Happy New Year!