Already Part of the "In Crowd" {Accepted in the Beloved}

I knew a woman who was part of our church years ago (she has been gone for many years now) who used to tell me...all the time..."I don't have any friends in this church."

But what she was really saying was, "I don't consider myself close to certain, specific women."

And what she really meant, truthfully, was, "I want to be on what I consider to be the inside track. I think the pastor's wife needs to make me her BFF."

(she later admitted to this, that is how I know...)

Meanwhile, I knew of at least two other women in our church that had reached out to her, who were quite available for her, who cared a lot about her. This woman's blatant disregard for her friendships made me angry. I asked her, point blank, "Who is __(name)___________ , then, chopped liver??!"

I had a way with words, in those days.

Today, more than a decade later, I might be a little more gentle. I said might.

Because I see today, more clearly than I saw back then, that everyone...everyone...wants to be beloved. They want to be special to someone who they consider special.

Today, I would be gentle...but not permissive. I still do not respect a woman who does not treasure her own beautiful life...her own friends...her own husband...her own children....her own home (whatever its size or condition...love and making the best of four walls makes every home a beautiful place)...

...I do not get along for very long with women who devalue what they have been given, because what they have been given is not what they want. They want what someone else has...maybe what I have, maybe someone else and what they have...someone else's success, their gifts and talents, their friendships, their whatever.

Celebrate who you are!

Never let who you are not, cancel out the beauty of who you are!

Your friends are the most lovely, your life is the most blessed, your children the most special of all, your home is the sweetest, your work the most meaningful, your church the most precious.

And when your child is a dedicated prodigal, your job stressful, your marriage lacking passion, your friendships not "meeting your needs"....

...that is when it is urgent that you begin to see your own life and your own dear ones as infinitely more beautiful than anyone else's.

If you do not consider your own friends to be the very best ones you could ever have, the most lovely, perfect women in the world... if you don't see your husband as the most attractive, your children as the most amazing, your grandchildren as the most beautiful...your mother as the greatest, your father as the most strong and wise...your sister as the most fabulous...

...maybe that's because you don't
treatany of your beloveds that way. Maybe they are not worth the effort in your estimation?

Or maybe they don't treat you with celebrity status, so you treat them likewise.

How lacking in grace and creativity. I am sad for you. Only because I see the same tendencies in me, and I sadden my own selfish-self.

I have come to the conclusion that I want to be the first one to celebrate you. Or I want to be the only one of the two of us who celebrates anything...that is okay by me.

I don't always celebrate first (or even at all) but at least I know for sure I would rather beat you to it. I will smoke you, in fact, if you give me half a chance.


Do you see? It's all in how you choose to see and celebrate your one, gorgeous life, and all who are part of it.




You don't have to be accepted into the inner circle of "those" certain women. You don't have to be one of their "beloveds" to BE beloved...the King is your Friend. God has accepted you into His heart...His inner circle...through Christ. He will relate to you as warmly and intimately and affirmingly as you believe Him to be towards you.

He sets your boundaries...those lines have fallen to you in pleasant places, the Bible says. If you cannot see the beauty of your very own life, it is your thinking towards it that is your problem. You don't need someone else's gift, personality, friends, money, or lifestyle.

You need to treasure what you have already been given.

Celebrating who you are frees you to do the same for others. You become free (truly) to celebrate who they are, without hoping they crown you their "BFF" in exchange for the favor.

Suddenly...you are doing unto others the way you wish they'd do unto you.

Beautiful. Just beautiful.


Grace and Peace,
Sheila Atchley
All blog content is the property of the writer, including all "In the Middle" intellectual and visual art property...

Way Too Much Fun {This Whole Artist Thing}

So today I got the last of my art show commissions plus two more prints (ordered over the weekend from my shop) off in the mail. My head is brimming and happy with a hundred new-to-me techniques, and two hundred original ideas.

I am having so much fun, I almost can't stand it myself. "Artist" is who I am, and "Artist-Teacher" is my sweet spot.

When you toss in two darling grand babies...one next door...one two minutes away...just watch me lay down and die from sheer joy, resurrect, die, and resurrect.

I am living a dream I have not earned and do not deserve. I have been made rich in a few ways money can buy...yet I am sloppy-rich in all ways money could never buy.

God has been so very good to me.

Grace and Peace,

Sheila Atchley

All blog content is the property of the writer, including all "In the Middle" intellectual and visual art property...

Art For Sale {An Original Mixed Media Canvas, Entitled "Achsah"}

(Post-edit: this painting has sold)

I have loved every mixed media girl I have ever painted...truly. But this woman has always had my heart...she is my favorite woman of Scripture.  Her name was Achsah.  She was Caleb's daughter, and this painting was inspired from the verse found in Judges 1:15.

She asked for what she should not have.  She asked for something that was against Jewish law (the law of God!) for any woman to have.

And she got it, baby.  Why?  Love trumps law.  Every time.

There are no words to describe the feeling I had today as I finished her...to see her come out of the Scripture, and out of my imagination, and into the light of day...

I have learned so much from this woman, who is only mentioned in Scripture so very briefly.

 She has taught me, over many years, to ask boldly...to be fully persuaded of my heavenly Father's love for me, and His willingness to lavish me with gifts I have not earned and do not deserve.

 If any life is a testimony to that truth, it is mine.

 "Achsah" is available for sale. She is a 16x20 mixed media original, rendered in willow stick, vine stick, charcoal, pastel, acrylics, inks and even collage...all on a beautiful, textural background of antique book and hymnal pages - many of which, the words peek through to surprise and bless you.

If she needs to come to your home to bless you...or to the home of a friend...contact me via email.

Grandchildren

I know, right? They sort of favor one another. This was a completely uncoached, unplanned, spontaneous shot...

...oh, how I love.

PS. They were watching the television version of the Maurice Sendak's children's book
Little Bear.

If you are an Amazon Prime member, you can watch it for free here...

PPS. My blog is one of the few
notmonetized. That doesn't mean I never will monetize...that just means right now I don't get anything from Amazon if you click on the link, which I hope you do, because Little Bear comes highly recommended by this PopPop and Mimi.





Grace and Peace,

Sheila Atchley

All blog content is the property of the writer, including all "In the Middle" intellectual and visual art property...

3 Steps To Greater Faith {So Simple}

A pastel and charcoal sketch I did tonight...

(...practicing tone and value. The expensive drawing lessons are finally paying off!) 

 Three steps to a greater faith...when you find that your faith is too small...when you are "of little faith"...

 1. Begin to consider how much you are loved by God.

 2. Multiply that by infinity.

 3. Be completely persuaded that He loves you.

 Then repeat those three steps, again and again, every day of your life. You will become a woman of great faith.

  "Faith works by love..."

Hey, Soul Sister! {I Adore You}

At my first art show, I was approached by a dark skinned beauty.  Long hair, very confident and so, so pretty.  She took her time, looking at each canvas, as her husband patiently waited, making small talk with my Preacher.

Then, she matter-of-factly rocked my world.  She said, "I want this painting, but I want her to have dark skin.  And I want her hair to be long and straight."

Then she said, "And I want this painting.  But I want her to have dark skin.  And her hair needs to be short, like this painting, but also curly."

Then (you guessed it), she said, "And I want this one - Soul Restoration.  But I want her to have dark skin.  And I want her to have this hair over here..."  (and she showed me an entirely other canvas....)

My head was spinning, as I wrote down her every wish.  This beautiful woman's wish was my command, and I heard the heart of God talking to me in her wishes...

"...I want her to have dark skin."

Now, I had tried to paint dark skin before, and I have long wanted to paint dark skinned beauties in my she-art, but I never could get it quite right.  So I'd quit.  In spite of that inner knowing that was admonishing me to keep trying, I would quit, and set the whole thing aside for "another day".   

So this is for all my dark skinned beautiful friends...my soul sisters...with whom I share a special bond.

You wanted her to have dark skin.

I've worked so hard...but I think I got it.

8x8 print available in my shop

Depression, Self Harm, Thoughts of Ending The Pain {There Is An Answer}

I don't have a tat. (That's hip-speak for "tattoo"...because I am a hip kinda girl. Kind of.)

But if I did have a tat, it would be this one. That's me, up there, drawing on myself with a Sharpie. I am forty-some-odd years old, and still had the feeling that I wanted to look over my shoulder, afraid my momma was going to catch me writing on myself.

That was a big no-no in my house, growing up. I am absolutely certain I got spanked for writing on myself, at some point in my childhood.

(No phone calls, mom, please. I wrote on myself. Get over it.)

Wow. That was better than therapy. That felt good.

(And my mother is reading this and laughing, I promise...)

The message portrayed here is just this - the semicolon represents the writer's decision not to end a sentence, but rather to add to the story.

The cross represents the message of the mighty grace of God. It is your only source of healing. It is the Word that must come after your semicolon. The cross represents the rest of the story. The part of your story where life comes out of death, and He gives you beauty for ashes.

My mother chose a semicolon, over forty years ago, and I am so glad she did. There was so much left of her story to tell, so much beauty waiting to be discovered.

My mother, with a handful of sleeping pills, and a hopeless heart, had an encounter with the Living God one night. Not long after that, she was filled with the Holy Spirit, and set free from her torment.

Ask me again why I am a firm believer in what the old saints called The Second Experience.

Fast forward a few decades, and you will find me...a preacher's wife...fighting for my joy, against the formidable giant of clinical depression.

It was a howling in my soul that would. not. stop. A desert-place is more than just dry. Being dry was the easy part. A desert-place is howling and empty. Desolate.

I don't know how else to describe it. If that sounds like melodrama to you, then you haven't been clinically ill. You've had a bout with the blues, not a pitch black night of the soul.

The Gospel saved me again. It saved me as a six year old girl. And it saved me again, not so many years ago.

The Preacher began to revisit the doctrines of Grace in January of 2009. I will never forget the exact Month and year. Not even he knew the depths of my despair at that time. I have always refused to make him responsible for my well being. I did not want to burden him or frighten him, that is the simple truth.

But he began to preach the scandalous grace of God as though that was all there was in all the world to preach. He preached grace courageously...even dogmatically...as though he sensed that lives depended on it.

Little did he know, back then. One of the lives was mine. I was listening, and I was investigating everything he taught.

I was set free from loving and serving the law of God, and I began to simply love God because He first loved me. I discovered for the first time that God no longer blesses those who keep the law...He blesses those who are in Christ Jesus, who depend on a righteousness that is not...not...not one whit...not their own.

The real Jesus took your sin and your sorrows and bore that burden to Calvary. The punishment that paid for your peace and total well-being was placed upon Him. By His stripes, you are healed of all manner...all manner...of sickness and dis-ease.

Don't put an end to your story. Choose the semicolon.

And come to the cross. Lay your heavy burden down.

I would love to pray for you. Simply slip me an email, with your first name, and I promise I will pray for you.

How The Lord loves you!


Written for you with love...

Sheila Atchley

All blog content is the property of the writer, including all "In the Middle" intellectual and visual art property...