“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1

My five-year-old has been memorizing this verse this month, so it is written on the chalkboard near the breakfast table.  This morning, as the rain gently hit the windowpanes, I read this verse with new eyes.  Of course!  That is why I have been feeling this way . . . that is why I am returning to this blog after so many months away!

January is always a beginning of sorts.  It is a new year.  I am in a new city, in a new house.  “In the beginning, God created . . . .”  In this beginning of 2016, as a woman made in God’s image, I am longing to create.  My words will only be a cloudy reflection of His glory, mere reminders of His truth, but I feel God’s blessing to write them anyway.

Do we all get the creativity itch in January?   I’ve been wanting to get out the watercolor paints, and I don’t know how to paint!  How I’d enjoy an hour spent at a table strewn with construction paper hearts, Valentine stickers, and doilies! Mostly, I’ve been yearning for plain white paper that feels soft between my fingers, for a smooth writing pen in my hand, and for hours in which to sit in the silence of January and write children’s books.

But life with a young family is seldom silent (even in January), and hours on end are hard to come by.  I’ve decided to be content with the surprises . . . an idea here, an hour to write there, a grammar school project that causes us to get out the art supplies.  As my father-in-law once counseled me, “Life shouldn’t be about art.  Art should be about life.”

In this new year, as we busy ourselves in our not-so-quiet days, I hope each of us lives so closely entwined with the Creator that when the snippets of time present themselves, our art will reflect His beauty.