Change comes in a variety of ways.  Sometimes it blows through your life like a tornado, twisting, turning, and spinning things all around.

Dictionary:  tornado |tôrˈnādō|noun                                                  a mobile, destructive vortex of violently rotating winds having the appearance of a funnel-shaped cloud and advancing beneath a large storm system.• a person or thing characterized by violent or devastating action or emotion: a tornado of sexual confusion.

Or it can come crashing in like a hurricane…

Dictionary:  hurricane |ˈhəriˌkān, ˈhə-ri-|nouna                                                 storm with a violent wind, in particular a tropical cyclone in the Caribbean.• a wind of force 12 on the Beaufort scale (equal to or exceeding 64 knots or 74 mph).

photo by Fabio

Finally, it can come like an earthquake…rumbling, shaking, trembling…the movements starting from deep within.

Dictionary:  earthquake |ˈərTHˌkwāk|nouna                                                      sudden and violent shaking of the ground, sometimes causing great destruction, as a result of movements within the earth’s crust or volcanic action.• a great upheaval: a political earthquake. Major earthquakes are confined to particular active regions of the earth’s crust corresponding to the edges of the crustal plates, and most earthquakes are due to the release of strain energy associated with the relative motions of the plates.

Thesauras: earth tremor, tremor, shock, foreshock, aftershock, convulsion, seismicactivity; informal quake.

photo by Fabio

If you go back and think about your life,  you could probably describe each pinnacle point of change as one of these natural disasters.  In some cases, they are a combination of all.  Right now…I’m assessing the damage after an earthquake… and maybe a little bit from a hurricane…well, shoot…I guess it’s a tornado too!  I’m in the freaking eye of the tri-fecta storm!  My path is moving around a bend that I don’t know.

Welcome to my studio!

Last Night!

I had my last art show at my art studio this past Thursday.  It marked the end of a two year adventure in my life.  I was filled with emotion remembering my opening night two years prior that I did with my Grandma.  It was such an exciting time and one of the most memorable nights of my life.  Now, I was closing the studio because of a situation beyond my control and she’s not here to help me.  There is an emptiness within me that only she could fill…I try and fill it up with her memories, but it’s not the same.  I wore the dress I wore to her funeral in honor of her.  I felt nostalgic, sad, but hopeful.

I really dreaded this change…all summer long,  I knew I had to move my studio, but I was in serious denial.  I was acting like my brother- in- law, Paul, in the book “Through Painted Deserts” (I’m in that book too…hee,hee,hee) while he was driving across America with Donald Miller.  They were in his volkswagon van headed to the Grand Canyon when the check engine light kept coming on.  Finally, Don asked him if he was going to do something about it, and without any verbal response, Paul simply took his gum out and stuck it over the light.

As you know, the check engine light is just the warning that bigger issues are going on internally.  Moving the studio was just the check engine light and I was definitely putting some Hubba Bubba gum over it.  I could feel the small rumblings of change happening from deep within me like an earthquake getting ready to explode, but I was ignoring the warning signs.  Like every good artist does….I stalled.  I kept asking God to give me direction, but was doing nothing to figure it out on my own.

In the meantime, my Dad bought a house in town that he had planned to renovate for him and my mom so they could move closer to me and the kids in Camas.  This particular house has a huge daylight basement that would make a perfect studio and  I always loved this house.

The wheels started turning and plans started changing.  As renovation started, I could see more and more that this house was suppose to be mine.  So my decision to move, came like a hurricane for my parents.  It was kind of a crashing statement…

“Soooo, heyyyyy  Mom and Dad, I know you guys just bought this house and were excited to move here, but…you know…I really like this house, and I’m kind of wondering if you could, like let me have it…no, not just the basement but the whole thing, and maybe you could buy another one close by….what do you think?”

I was having flashbacks of me at 16yrs. old kissing my Dad all over his face as I was snagging a $20 from his wallet and reassuring him that “Mom said it’s ok!…except this time it is was wayyyyy bigger!

We are now in the tornado part of the storm…my house is a mess, as I’ve got half my studio here and half of it in storage.  The new house is in complete renovation mode…there are walls knocked out, wood everywhere, floor boards and piping exposed and one might think it will never be resurrected.   Plus, my parents have to figure out a plan B as I hijacked their plan A.  In the meantime, I’ll need to run classes out of my current home until the new studio is ready.  That means everyone will need to be flexible!

The thing about natural disasters, is even though they are devastating & terrible,  the most beautiful things blossom from them.  You get to see humanity work at it’s best as people from all over the world come to help!  It’s the same with our own personal storms.  You see how amazing, wonderful, and caring people really are.  It’s in these times you see God’s hand reaching down into the universe… & touching our souls and it’s in these uncertain times, that I feel the most grateful.

I remember talking to one of the AWW girls in class a few months ago.  Feeling a little stressed and sad, I was explaining how uncertain everything was as this was prior to me hijacking my parents house.  I said that quite possibly I’d have to run classes out of my basement.  She looked at me and said with a smile,

“Elida, we will go wherever you go…it’s not the location, the building, or even the class that we come for, we come to be with you, to be inspired and guided by you…so if you are in your basement, we’ll be there!”

I felt my heart skip a little, I looked around at all the other reassuring smiles and felt so utterly loved!