While I found my way to a serious faith committment when I was 22, I didn't find "my thing," my passion, until 2012 when I was in my 60s. In many ways I didn't find my way to articulating who I am at all until - today (2021)!
The key point of course is how to define "finding myself," that is figure out who I am. Today, at about noon on December 28, 2021 I finally realized that finding myself means finding purpose - my purpose. I didnt know it at all for many years but faith, marriage, and motherhood simply did not entirely fill my cup.
While I see the spiritual part of life as by far the most important part, for those of us not in vowed religious life, I think there has to be second part that organizes the rest of our life.
Dropping out of college, eventually getting married (♡) and raising/homeschooling our family (♡♡♡♡♡♡) took 30 years of my life. Being a wife and mother loomed very large over the entire landscape of my life during those years. That's who I was : a wife and mother. Then in 2012, by which time our youngest children were 14 and 16, I started painting - which changed everything for me. From my first painting, something deep down inside of me rejoiced. I like to think of this as a coming home experience.
10 years into painting I now see that while I have always been creative I didnt find my native language, so to speak, my particular art form(s), until I started painting! As it turns out, making art/creating isn't just another way to think and ponder for me; it's the way my whole being, my mind and soul, work!
After faith, in a most amazing way, making art/being creative entirely satisfies what I see as a God-given need in me to paint, to create, to ponder and reflect through making art, to respond and interact with life through the intermediary of art, in order to reach deeper understanding, even revelation, about truth, about beauty, and ultimately about God. O the wonder!
