Willful disobedience: The day of the loud, full, hell-bound woman

Face 3, willful disobedience is available. Click on the right hand toolbar.

Nah, I don’t really think I’m hellbound…I just like playing with that which is not to be touched…  I like dancing on the edge. I’m so glad I made it here.

First, I need to tell you this story. It’s all true:

When I walked into the church wearing pants and my self-cropped hair.  The pastor preached a fiery sermon about disobeying the shepherd (him, the leader — shepherd — making the rest of us sheep, hmmm.)  A move of willful disobedience would get you sent to hell…pants and short hair were my ticket, if I didn’t repent. I wasn’t repentant.

I’ll be 40 in April of 2015 and I feel like someone has shaken me awake. (Really when I writing about my old church has made me realize that I was writing about 20 years ago like it was yesterday — that woke me up!)… I’ve been shaken awake into my own magic and magnificence…into a deep self-love that woman aren’t supposed to just have.  Especially not the pant-wearing and hair-cutting kind.

And, for the most part, I obeyed. I was afraid that everyone would think I was a fool if I didn’t.  They’d think, “She’s so dark brown and her hair so not straight. She’s so short and chubby.  She deserves nothing. She’s lucky for anything she had.”  So I stayed quiet and hungry. 

But, I worked hard to not appear fool enough to believe I was loved, and valuable, and gorgeous.  I worked hard to be quiet and to tip toe under the radar.  I preferred to fail over being seen… I worked hard to  be self-deprecating and I waited for someone else to green light my deepest desires.  (No one will do that.)

And everything suffered.  Not enough money.  Not enough energy.  Not enough… I have felt so disconnected from this wonderful and awful life.  Working hard to obey what a woman is supposed to be takes too much.  It costs too much…too many days, too many laughs…too many walks in comfortable shoes and moments of not holding in my belly.  

So I’m declaring a state of willful disobedience.  

Loud.

Full.

Hell-bound.

And they shall be given over to their obsessions

Gray splotches. (Inspired by my son’s stellar color mixing on cardboard.)

Turquoise.

Spots.

Peach.

Face 2. Available for purchase.

 

Antiquing.  (A new obsession.)

The smell of raw wood.  

Lipgloss when I’m feeling anxious or need to be able to think clearly.  These go hand in hand for me.Back at that old church I mentioned a couple of posts ago, we read the King James version of the Bible (holieth coweth!)  In the Old Testament, God would sort of threaten that the people who were misbehaving would be given over to their sins or something to that effect.  In essence, that’d be handed over to whatever was carrying them away. That wasn’t a good thing.

And yet, when I’m deep in my obsessions, I feel carried away and so alive.  When I’m at a certain point in a piece, I ask myself “What are you obsessed with?”  If I don’t see it in the piece, it seems to lack depth and emotion.  I’ve ruined pieces that way too, ha!  But was it creativity without ruining a piece or many?

When I’m in that juicy, obsessed place, I think I’m “given over to my obsessions.”  And I giggle, because there is a part of me that is so terrible.  I really like that part of me 😀