This is my heart

I haven't felt this alive in a long time.

I just painted a representative of what my heart looks like.

It was amazing. I can't even begin to describe how fulfilling and deeply worshipful it felt to do that.

I wouldn't really consider myself an artist, but I love to paint. And sometimes, I think God is the one painting through me.

This was one of those times. As I painted, I began to see unfolding before my eyes exactly what God wanted me to see.

This is my heart, one side oozing and dripping with the black sludge of sin, and the other side exploding with the effortless radiance of God's glory and love. The black side is shrunk and eaten away, weighted down by its own inadequacy to do anything good. The light side is swollen and radiant, bursting open in a spontaneous overflow of light. And in the center of my heart is the pure white of Christ, shining over my whole heart, overthrowing the darkness and being the source for the light. My heart is now tethered to a cord of light and life, filled with Jesus' blood that washes whiter than snow. He is eliminating my darkness, and enabling me to effortlessly shine His love instead of drip darkness into others' lives.

Whatever we let overtake our hearts will be what comes out. We all have holes in our hearts - does your heart ooze with the sinful nature of your selfish desires, or does it shine with the radiant nature of your Savior?

 

Precious Gifts (Guest Post)

You have all heard the saying, " Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain." I couldn't agree more. Ann Voskamp, the author of One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are remarked that "Life is not an emergency." Every moment is a precious gift. It's our job to slow down to savor it.

The world is full of pain. The world is full of ugliness and despair. Still, God has chosen to give us beauty. We don't deserve His gifts, but, still He choses to give them. They are truly gifts of love.

Open your eyes. Notice the beauty of the little things around you. 

A baby's smile. 

A loaf of freshly-baked bread.

 Golden sunshine.

 Sparkling dewdrops. 

Bright bursts of color. 

Leather-bound books. 

Classical music. 

New life.

Holding hands with your siblings. 

Twirling until you get dizzy. 

Laughing so hard your sides hurt. 

Blooming flowers.

Rain.

These are beautiful things. 

These are the things that God has given us to enjoy. 

These are the things that require us to slow down and notice. 

It's all too easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of day-to-day life. Trust me. I know. As the oldest of five children who is trying to balance family, friends, and chores while earning a college degree from home, slowing down for the little things in life is a daunting task.

Still, I need to step back and breathe. I need to stop all feel the presence of an Almighty God in my life and watch as He writes a story. My story. And, when He writes my life story, He puts in wonderful beauties of little things that I don't want to miss. 

I'm Cassandra. Hazel eyes behind black-framed glasses. Sixteen-years-old. A girl set-apart by Jesus Christ. Lover of words, pictures, family, friends, laughing, and life. Laughs often, takes pictures compulsively, writes like there is no tomorrow. A book-worm, singer, heath-nut, beach girl, bibliophile, wanna-be-world-traveler, adventurer, skirt-wearer, daydreamer, homeschool student, college sophomore, humanities major, and lover of beautiful things… This is me. You can visit my blog here: Inside My Mind

To spread beauty

I've been reading Lynnette Kraft's excellent posts on the reasons for blogging. (I would definitely encourage you to read them - she gives a lot of helpful tips on what makes blogging beneficial for you and your readers.) As I've read them, I'm finding my goal for this blog narrowed and strengthened. I've typically posted thoughts on what God has been teaching me, events in my life (especially musical ones), samples of my writing, and devotional/encouragements. And I believe the thing that ties these all together is one word: beauty.

To me, beauty is more than just something that strikes you as "perfect" or "pleasing." Beauty is more than something external - it is the evidence of God.

The subtitle of my blog says "Painting beauty across the palette of life," and that is exactly what I desire to do with this blog. Sharing the beauty in the everyday, the fictional, the musical, even in the painful. I want to detect and magnify the evidence of Christ that I see everywhere around me. And I hope that in painting beauty through my words, pictures, and music, that you may see it and be encouraged to do the same in your own life.

All that said, I am in need of bloggers to help me continue in spreading beauty throughout this school year. The school year is coming up fast, and with it, sadly, will be a much diminished amount of free time for me. So I would like to recruit at least ten guest posters for the school year.

If you would like to guest post for me, send me an email (find it up at the top right under "contact me"). Let me know what you'd consider writing on, and I'll pick the top ten. Thank you so much, sweet bloggers - and continue spreading beauty!

Dear friends...

Today is my birthday!

God has blessed me so much this past year - He's taught me the meaning of His strength, His joy, and His peace no matter what circumstances I'm facing. He's blessed and enriched my life - and I can't wait to see what is in store for this next year!

On this occasion, I thought it would be fitting to share one of my poems with you. I hope you enjoy it. :)

Stop and savor
The flavor
Of God’s presence.

 Just the way the sky looks,
Peace floating in the air,
A song carrying the breeze,
Joy coming from nowhere.

Satisfaction striking me
With sudden clarity.
Love sparkling my sight
With all the creativity of light.

Oh, stop and savor
The flavor
Of God’s presence –
In this world,
In this life,
In me.
© Melody 2010

So Much More

I am being challenged and inspired so much in my classes, it's incredible. Though my classes are on many varied subjects (such as Spiritual Formation, Humanities, and Music Philosophy & Aesthetics) they all seem to be pointing to the same thing. I'm learning that there is so much more. So much more of God to experience, comprehend on some level, and praise Him for.

Such is the concept I'm studying in Humanities currently. We're talking about how God is the Creator and Originator of everything - and therefore we who are made in His image are also called to create. What really struck me is the idea that God is on a "higher level" than us - the fact that He is our Creator, and we are the created, living on a lower level of "reality" than Him. (I know this sounds kind of twisted - bear with me a moment and you'll see.)

For example, in my story "Rescue My Heart", I had a character who is an author. I, as the author of the story, knew things that she did not know. Yet she, as an author within the story, knows things that her characters don't know.

This is a beautiful metaphor for how we are in relation to God and to our own creations. Each one is on a different level - but even though we are on a lower level than God, He has designed us to know in a limited sense some of His level of thinking.

Can you see how that would just open up a whole new world? If God is on a higher level than we are, He is like the real thing, and we are like just a shadowy, blurry picture. There's so much more than this world... this life.. this existence. There's a type of beauty I've never experienced, a glory I cannot even fathom, a fulness I cannot even wish for because I can't even begin to understand how I can be filled.

Doesn't this bring you incredible joy as well as incredible longing?

Like I said earlier this evening,

"It's like walking into a sunset - you don't really know what's there, but you know that it's going to be beautiful."

Before and After

I found this cool "photography thingie" from Hannah at Aspire, and I thought I would give it a try. It's a blog hop, and you're supposed to post before and after pictures of a picture you edited. Click here to go to the blog where the blog hop is held.

Here's the two I did:

SOOC (straight out of camera)

Edited:

SOOC:

Edited:

 For my edits I use Picnik, a free photo editing website. It's not too complicated, which is good for me. :) Let me know what you think of my before and afters!

Colorful

Hannah over at Trusting in His Love is having a photography contest. The theme is color - any color! The deadline is tomorrow, and I just heard about it today... so get over there and enter while you can! :)

Here are my two colorful pictures:

 

Also, I have some sad news to tell. I accidentally dropped my camera yesterday, and it broke. :( The lens is stuck half-way out, and it will only turn on to show an error message. :( So I'm pretty sure I'll have to get a new camera. Do you have any suggestions for me? I don't want it to be too expensive (like under $100 if I can), but I would like to be able to do more things with it such as macro, better quality video, higher megapixels (the one I have currently is 8.2 MP). So what would you suggest?

Brown

If you know me at all, you know my favorite color is brown. Not pink or purple or blue or some other normal color - brown. Chocolate brown in fact. So here I'll share with you some pictures I've taken that are brown.

 

me looking out the window 

 

Much like LotR... except there is a car :P

 I did some interesting edits on this one.

One of my favorites

And for a bonus, here's a picture of the delicious banana bread I made yesterday!

Audition Time!

Recently I've been trying to practice piano for three hours a day, and I think it's affecting me. Both yesterday and today, I've dreamed in vivid detail about practicing piano; with my dreams usually involving a mistake I made, or some part where my hands wouldn't obey my brain.

I bet you're wondering why I'm getting crazy about piano all of a sudden. Well, it isn't really all of a sudden. I've been preparing for this time for months, years even. You see, next Thursday I will be auditioning to get into the music school at Cedarville University.This is a big event for me!

Since I've been preparing these pieces for so long, I've kind of felt like I "had arrived". I mean, I've had a lot of instruction on them, and I think I can play them pretty well! But recently, through a new teacher, and a group class, I've found that I can improve a whole lot more. I've been realizing that I can't treat the piece like an untamed colt, to break and master and then move on. Instead, I must treat it like going on a journey: uncovering layers of sound, touch, technique, dynamics, phrasing, and beauty. And even after my audition the journey will not end. For when does music ever end?

The three pieces I will be playing are Bach Prelude & Fugue in B-Flat Minor (which is considered one piece), Haydn Sonata No. 59, and Schubert Impromptu Op. 90 No. 4. (I've given you links to listen to the songs so you can get an idea of how they go, though I couldn't find one of the Bach piece.) The Bach sounds like it's meant for organ, with slow, chordal passages and a very measured beat. It's very solemn and proud, in a tragic way. The Haydn is very jumpy and capricious, almost like Haydn is just playing around on the piano having fun. That one's probably the hardest for me, just because it's so fast and hard to maintain control. I much prefer slower pieces like the Bach. The Schubert is my favorite, because it's just so beautiful; like a vivid painting cascading down like watercolors from a painter's brush. I especially love the middle section where it switches to the minor key. It's so sad and touching - almost melodramatic!

So I am very excited, and of course nervous for this audition. I am trying to take the advice a good friend gave me: to keep my thoughts focused on God, and the beauty He has created in this music, rather than on myself. That way, I won't be as nervous. I would definitely appreciate prayer for all of this!

~Melody

Blue

Though my first loves are music and writing, my second love is photography. I bring my camera with me wherever I go, because I can find so much beauty everywhere! So, to share my love, and some of my pictures, I'm going to be posting some of my pictures on here for you to enjoy (but please don't copy them). And I thought it would be fun to group them by color. So this week, the color is blue.

(taken out of an airplane window)

This is me, but I edited it to make it so I have blue eyes ;)

 

This reminds me of the verse: "The Heavens are declaring the glory of God!"  

 

I also thought of a little challenge for you all. Since all my pictures are blue (or mostly blue), I'd like to challenge you to come up with a quote from a song that has the word "blue" in it (just make sure to keep it wholesome). Also, feel free to use my idea - but please link back to me! :D

~Melody

Capture the words... feelings... melodies

Recently, I've been getting back into writing and composing. I love the feel of creating something; almost like I feel closer to my Creator. I guess it's because I'm using the gifts He's given me, echoing Him in a very tiny, pale way - and I know it pleases Him.

I've had a very cool experience coming home from a Bible study I go to every Monday night. For about the past month, I've found that each night as I drive home, God gives me a new song. Instead of listening to the radio, I begin humming and trying to find new melodies. Or I say words out loud that fit with what I'm feeling, and expand on them to make them into phrases... rhymes... and finally a real song. It really is amazing how God gives these songs to me, born as they are out of the moment. :)

I also have been getting back into writing, which is something I always seem to put off. I really do like to write, but I think I put it off just because it takes so much thought and planning. So, I guess I've decided to turn my brain on (lol)! I recently finished writing a book that a friend and I have been writing since she moved away. It's really special to us, and I think it could be published eventually after we edit and polish it some.

Another really big writing thing I'm excited about is NaNoWriMo, short for National Novel Writing Month. (The website is www.nanowrimo.com) Basically, the goal is to write a 50,000 word novel in the month of November. I'm really getting pumped for it, because when I did it last year, I had a blast! I've come up with a number of novel ideas, but finally settled on this one. It's called "True Beauty." Here's the synopsis (or the "teaser"):

Life has not been good to thirteen-year-old Anna. Her mother was the only one who understood her need to write and her love for beauty, yet she died when Anna was eleven. Anna and her father don't understand each other at all, so each of them live in their own world.
Anna lives the world of her books. She has an all-consuming passion for creating beauty in her writing, but she never can seem to grasp what makes up true beauty.
When she and her father move to a tiny house in the country, she begins to write another story, convinced that the beauty around her will absorb into her writing. The story is about a princess who is held captive by an evil prince. Anna becomes to engrossed in her story that she basically lives, breathes, and sleeps it. And one day, she begins to cry as she writes a deeply moving scene.
Instantly, she is transported into the world of her story. She is ecstatic - she had always dreamed of escaping into her own story! Yet none of her characters knows who she is... except the villain. And he wants her to write him into the hero of the story. Can she escape his schemes and save her book from going out of control? And who will save her?

So yes, I've had a lot of writing and creating on the brain. Who knows? Maybe I can capture what really makes up true beauty.