Blog Redesign!

I was thoroughly unhappy with my original blog design. It was finished hastily so that I could have some idea of how things were going to work with Blogger. It was decent, but it looked to me to be childish, pixelated, too busy, and kind of messy (there was just too much colour and too many shapes all going too many directions). Plus, while I think quite a bit of it suited me, there was something out of place that I couldn't put my finger on. Basically, I just wasn't satisfied with the overall look and feel of it, so I made a new one. :)

Back in January, I found a good portion of the comics that I had drawn while working at the riverboat casino (the ones that I thought I had lost for good). I was happy, but I knew those weren't all of them. Well, about a month ago, I found the rest of them and scanned them. Then, today, I snipped a few pictures of myself from the comics to make a new Facebook profile picture and cover image. I had so much fun and enjoyed it so much that I decided to redesign my whole blog theme!

Green has been my favourite colour since I can remember - since I was a little girl and I sat down with my Little Golden Treasury and read along as The Color Kittens mixed all the colours in their search for green. When I was younger I preferred a sea green, but as I got older, I came to appreciate olive, especially olive drab. This was convenient since, for a long time, I also have been very fond of military designs, insignia, and the wartime designs and imagery of World War II. (I credit Molly McIntire, the American Girl, with the earliest budding of my fascination, and well, if you know anything about the book series, you might draw a correlation between it and the name of my blog. ^___^)

Now, you might be inclined to think that this love for military-esque things came from the fact that I am a Marine Corps wife, but you'd be wrong. I was driving my Barbies around in an olive drab G.I. Joe Jeep as a kid instead of a pink convertible (because the Jeep was green, and Barbie fit better in it than the convertible .. and the Jeep was really more open and airy than the convertible any way...) and wearing boots that my Army uncle said resembled combat boots when I was still in high school. No, I think that my fascination with the styles of the military just made it easier for me to accept the transition into being a military wife. (That, and Girl Scouts. We sang cadences while we walked double-file -in pairs- everywhere we went. We also participated in morning and evening colours ceremonies, especially at camp. So hearing the Navy Corpsmen run past my house in the morning singing their cadences or hearing evening colours out my bedroom window are in some odd way comforting.)

Someone might look at the olive drab map bag that I use at a purse and just think that I am being "moto". Moto, in the Marine Corps, stands for "motivational" and would mean that I was being supportive. But, that's just being me. Just like I would rather wear camis and boots than business casual (especially the "woodlands" camis, which I still think should be called "forest" if they're gonna have "desert"), and I like to hang my necklace pendants on ball chains, and I think canvas is the most awesome fabric ever. No, moto for me are the USMC patches that I have glued (and need to someday actually have sewn) onto my purse, the key chain I have of my husband's boot camp photo, the USMC pin I sometimes wear, or the key chain I got while visiting my husband at MCT that says "Marine Corps Wife: Toughest Job in the Corps". (Lord, I had no idea at the time how true I would find that statement to be a few years later!)

My point is that the kind-of militaristic design of this blog is not some homage to the base we live on or the organization that signs my husband's pay checks. It's just a part of my own aesthetics. And it really doesn't reflect on whether I agree with the military or not - I like to keep a rather romanticized view of the military. It makes it easier to deal with the fact that I have lost a lot of respect for the military just from being a spouse.

Sooooooo.... all rabbit-trail ramblings aside, ta-da: there's a new blog design, and I like it! :D /throws confetti

My Confession of Pride

Since the beginning of this year, I have made it a habit to seek out time with God daily and immerse myself in His Word. He led me to read Beth Moore's So Long Insecurity and complete the devotional journal that goes along with the book, and it changed my life. There were many aspects of the book that shifted my paradigm, but the following passage probably caused the most shift. Beth quotes from the book Perfecting Ourselves to Death by psychiatrist and theologian Richard Winter (emphasis by me):

Although perfectionists seem very insecure, doubting their decisions and actions, fearing mistakes and rejection, and having low opinions of themselves, at the same time, they have excessively high personal standards and an exaggerated emphasis on precision, order and organization, which suggests an aspiration to be better than others. 

Most psychological explanations see the desire to be superior and in control as compensation for feelings of weakness, inferiority, and low self-esteem. But it could also be that the opposite is true; we feel bad about ourselves because we are not able to perform as well, or appear as good, as we really think we can. We believe we are better than others, but we keep discovering embarrassing flaws. Perfectionists' black-and-white thinking takes them on a roller coaster between feeling horribly inadequate and bad about themselves, and then, when things are going well, feeling proud to be so good. Low self-esteem and pride coexist in the same heart.

Beth says:

We will never feel better about ourselves by becoming more consumed with ourselves. Likewise, we will never feel better about ourselves by feeling worse about others. Superiority can't give birth to security. Neither, by the way, can the relentless pursuit of perfection.

This had the most profound effect on me. I always thought that I was a humble person - ask anyone who knows me, my husband even, and they will tell you that I am not a prideful person - but I was wrong, and they are wrong. Just yesterday, I surmounted the task of explaining to my husband how I could have such a deep-seeded duality that went so unnoticed for so many years, and he was thoroughly shocked to see how proud I have really been.

In Beth's So Long Insecurity devotional journal, she presents the question of how pride has presented itself in my life. This is what I wrote in response:

For many years now, unbeknownst to me - or perhaps more unrealized - I have been building myself up with self-sustained worth. I have trained myself to think that I have value and worth because of what I have done, accomplished, or overcome! I've put myself on a perfectionism roller coaster to build my pride, too. I've been so proud of myself for that trip that I took alone to see my husband in Twentynine Palms - it's been the crowning jewel for me. And I don't know if I have ever stopped to consider that I was never, truly alone in the situation and I didn't do it all by myself: God was there and He gave me the courage to do it. He watched over me the whole time!

I flew out to San Diego all by myself, rented a car, and drove three hours across California to see my husband while he was at Marine training in Twentynine Palms. Then, when our visiting time was up, I repeated the trip back to San Diego, in California rush-hour traffic. It was a big deal for me - less than six months prior, I wasn't sure if I would survive while my husband went to boot camp. I had transformed from being extremely dependent on my husband for most everything to being quite capable on my own. It was a phenomenal event in my life, don't get me wrong, but it wasn't something I achieved on my own.

I had quickly discovered that, despite how incredibly supportive my friends, family, and coworkers were, my only real source of comfort while my husband was away was spending time with God in His Word. I wrote my husband a letter every day that he was in boot camp and in each letter I transcribed a devotional. I also attended a Beth Moore Bible study with my husband's paternal grandmother once a week. God had my ear - He was talking to me that whole time, moving and changing me.

A few pages later, I free-wrote this:

For so many years, I have thought that I was being humble and modest - but I see so clearly now that I wasn't. How many other things have been a deceptive mask for pride?I have encouraged people to look at things from other perspectives and realize that we are all just people - equal in our sins and equal in the weight of our struggles - even if one struggle might seem bigger than another, we are all on our own paths fighting our own disadvantages. And yet, here I am, thinking that I am somehow better than other people. I was blessed to be what is considered "smart" in this world. I learn fast and have the capacity to achieve a lot. I was blessed to be able to put pen to paper and draw what I see in my head. Great, beautiful gifts each and every one of them - but they are no greater than the gifts of anyone else. I am no better a person because of them!I had all these gifts when I was a teenager and I still was sinful to the max; I was still as lost as could be. Everything good in me, every good that I do, every accomplishment that I have, every mountain that I climb are all because my Heavenly Father has helped me!I have done nothing noteworthy or good on my own - my plans tend to walk me right into trouble, heartache, self-loathing, and despair! I feel like pieces in a puzzle are starting to come together in my head. Whenever I used to say "I am nothing without You", it was with a heart of pride and self-loathing - not a heart of reverence. I was seeing myself as sinful scum, and yet I was still praising myself for all of "my great accomplishments". I say "I am nothing without You" now not because I sin and that sin in itself is disgusting, not because I can't seem to avoid sin, and not because I "sometimes manage to do things right" - I am nothing without my Heavenly Father because He has given me all that is beautiful in me! I am who I am because of God - not simply because He touched me, but because He made me and He continues to make me!

Even more pages later, Beth asks what genuine humility looks like. I replied with this:

I realized last week that I am very far from being humble. I am proud and I cover that pride with a veil, coloured to be something else, but made of insecurity.I have realized that nothing I do is my own accomplishment - God has given me the means to accomplish every task. He is the one who does it all; He is the one responsible. I think that true humility is giving God the recognition He deserves - which is all of it! I would like very much to be more like this!

I remember my mother telling me throughout my childhood and adolescent years about how "gifted" I had been as a child. She told me that she had the opportunity to place me into special accelerated learning programs when I was young, but she chose not to because she wanted me to have a "normal childhood". Aside from the fact that her parenting paradigm was ignoring my needs and forcing me to be someone I wasn't, she was also planting the seed in my head for the thought that I was more special than the other kids. And let me tell you, that seed grew and took full bloom by the time I hit high school. I jeopardized so many friendships because I felt threatened and did so many things to get attention - simply because I thought I was better and deserved the attention and acclaim. 

When things did not go according to my plan or when I received bad attention, I would blame other people. In my mind, surely they just were blind to how special I was. Or, maybe they were jealous - they knew in their hearts that I was better, but they just couldn't admit it. (Funny how my pride caused me to project pride on other people.)

When my parents started fighting and separated and my life got ever so much more complicated and painful, I told myself that no one else was experiencing the kind of pain and trouble that I experienced. I narrowed my focus on the things that were going right in the lives of other people so that I could feel vindicated in my hatred. The idea that they had the "perfect life" made them seem ungrateful and made their lives seem easy. This made me feel good about myself for persevering through the turbulence in my life; it made me feel like the better person.

Even my art skill grew out of a prideful need to feel special and win attention. That is probably why I have had such a hard time reintegrating it back into my life. It was born of an ugly place inside of me and I am having to relearn how to enjoy my gift without revisiting that ugly place.

After high school, even after I met my future husband and came to Christ, I still was full of seething, smirking pride. In the wake of her divorce, my mother had mentally and emotionally abused me. I was broken, devalued, confused and full of pain. My concept of self had been so battered and crushed that I clung to my pride like a life preserver - it was all that I thought I had left. Surely, I had value and could love myself again if I could pull myself up out of hell by my bootstraps. It's funny to me now how proud I was of all that I thought I was doing, when in reality Christ was dragging me, kicking and screaming in the direction that God wanted me to go!

I am not Catholic, so I have never experienced a confessional, but I imagine that this is somewhere along the line of what it feels like. I have bared myself to God before and I have bared myself to my husband, but never have I bared myself to anyone else like this. I feel like the life I have been living, the life that other people have seen me living, and the person that other people see me as is a sham. Mollie is a giant ruse, and now I feel like I am plucking my own feathers - I am not a peacock; I am just a chicken in a peacock suit!

And I want it to be clear that I am not doing this for attention. In all honesty, I cringe on the inside as I write this. I would much rather continuing living in my peacock-suit. But God has been doing more than tickling my ear lately - He has the most beautiful way of kindly taking our biggest sins and gently slamming us upside the head with the truth, His Truth! And while it is ultimately very cathartic to do things His way, it is often quite uncomfortable, awkward, and sometimes downright painful. (Though, doing things our way tends to be just as uncomfortable, awkward, and painful without the catharsis.)

The Bible talks about "death to self" many times, but I never really got it - not really. 

Luke 9:23 (NIV)

Then He said to them all: “Whoever wants to be My disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow Me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for Me will save it."

I always thought that we were supposed to love ourselves. I understood that we were to give up our time to read God's Word and follow Jesus, but I never quite grasped denying myself or losing my life for Christ. Oh, I could probably have explained it to you, but it never penetrated my heart. Then I read Beth's book, and those puzzle pieces I mentioned earlier started coming together. 

The final piece was the following sermon from John MacArthur on 2 Timothy 3:

You say, "But, John, what about in the Bible it says we're to love ourselves?" It never says that in the Bible. There's no command in Scripture to love yourself. You say, "What about love your neighbor as yourself." That tells us to love our neighbor, not our self. Well what about husbands, love your wives even as your own bodies? That says love your wife. You say, "But it says as yourself." Yes, it doesn't command us to love ourselves, it assumes we do. Did you get the difference? It makes that assumption. Why? Because that is reflective of our fallenness. That's an assumption, not a command. And I daresay, if we weren't fallen, the Lord wouldn't have to make the command or the parallel. So self-love is a sin. The Bible constantly warns on the other hand against pride and self-love and calls self-love a sin. The Bible doesn't teach us to love ourselves, it assumes that that is a part of our fallenness and we need to give to others what we so readily give to ourselves by way of attention and concern. The pervasive deadly sin that grips the human soul is pride and self-love, and out of that sewer pipe flows all the rest of the things that he gives us here.

Self-love and pride certainly aren't cured in me. That flowering weed in my heart has not been eradicated simply by identifying it. But I know that the cure is my continued pursuit of Christ through my daily choice to deny my self and pick up my cross.

In the past few months, I have come to realize that God is the one true love of my heart (and that it is not some fairy-tale Prince Charming). And I find that when I accept His redeeming love, I don't need someone else to love me - not even myself. I don't hate me, but I try leave the loving of me up to God. If anyone beyond God loves me, then that is a gift, and certainly not the expectation that it used to be. This is because my sight and my purpose are fixed on God, not the world, not man, not my husband or my daughter or my mother or anyone else in this world - just God.

Matthew 10:34-39 (NIV)

"Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn“‘a man against his father,a daughter against her mother,a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’“Anyone who loves their father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves their son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. Whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it."

I started this post thinking that God's incessant pushing for me to create it might be so that I could benefit someone else, but now that I have come to the end of it... I think He had me write it for me, so I could come clean. Because now that all of this has poured out, I don't feel like such a sham. :)

Forgotten Promises - Progression

One of my favourite part about the creation of art is getting to see the progression as a project is completed. It is probably why I love concept art so much - I get to see the progress as designers sketch up ideas and flesh them out, ending in complex art forms like animated movies or video games.

Here's a progression of a piece I did across the month of September in 2012. It's called Forgotten Promises and it is a revisit on a piece that I completed in 2003 (original here). I entered the revisit into a competition on DeviantART, but unfortunately it wasn't a winner. 

The line art sketch, completed September 10th:

The background, light effects, and cleanup of the line art, completed September 11th:

Blocked out the colour, added text, and began work on hair, completed September 13th:

Completed colour on the eyes and lips, continued to work on hair, and began shading of the facial skin, completed September 17th:

Completed colour on the hair, continued work on the skin, completed September 27th:

I decided that I didn't like the direction the skin tone was going, so I reworked it. Also, I was upset with the colour and shape of the lips, so I scrapped the originals and started over. The final version was completed on September 28th:

Honestly, there are still portions of the image that I am not happy with. Though her eyes are in proportion, I would have liked them to be a bit larger. I am not satisfied with her bangs or the shading of her skin. And I would have liked to have added a bit of a lens flare  to her necklace. But, I got really sick of looking at it, so I wrapped it up and submitted it to the contest instead of tweaking it.

I used a few resources for this image (fonts, tutorials, brushes, etc). Please check out the link to the DeviantART gallery page at the top of this post to see what resources I used. Thank you! :)

Asterodea WIP

So, my current colouring project is the image above: Asterodea by Cat Craig. To clarify: I am colouring her lineart. I love, love, love the lineart drawn by the fabulous Cat Craig (aka Catzilla). Her lines make me dream about all the scrumptious colours that could cover the canvas. So much possibility!

All of my progress thus far has been accomplished on my (old) laptop, and this is the first time I have viewed it on a different screen. I have to say that I am disappointed with some of the colours. Some of it is darker than I expected (like her skin) and other parts are way too bright (like her lips). Ugh. Frustrating.

Once my new laptop comes in and I get up and running again, I will be back to work on this. I actually just discovered the beauty of Photoshop layer masks while working on this piece. It opened up a lot of new possibilities and I am both dismayed that it has taken me so long to find this technique and also extremely excited. :D

Civilians Don't Know

No civilian has any idea what it really means to be a soldier. And, no, Civilian, you don't know. So don't even begin to argue with me. 

This is something I have come to realize while on my journey as a Marine wife. I was once a generic civilian. The most that I knew about the military was what the media fed me and what I had learned in school. I also knew that I had family in the military - some of them were POWs, some of them were reservists, they were in all branches if service, some of them died, some of them were "career" (a term I learned in the military - it means that they stuck with it until retirement), and some of them hated it so much they couldn't wait to get out. I knew generic things: boot camp/basic training is hard - regardless of the branch you're in, they're trained to fight, they get deployed, they shoot guns and some pilot helicopters or jets or drive trucks or tanks. I also knew that a lot die, and many have been prisoners - to be tortured, sometimes to die, too. But I didn't really get it, not really.

Boot camp begins by breaking down these men and women, these soldier-hopefuls, so that they can be built back up and conditioned. A soldier isn't born; a soldier is created. And there is pain and struggle in this process. There is strength and triumph in the end for most, but in the interim, there is also loneliness and fear. Often, a soldier is on the high of being strong and triumphant, but there is also disappointment and disillusionment, too. I have never heard of a soldier who lived the rosy picture that their recruiter painted for them.

It's an endless sea of early mornings, late nights, and days that seem to go on for weeks. There is sleeping on the ground, in the dirt and the cold, or the heat. There's gunfire and danger - the excitement, but also the fear of never returning home. You get to "see the world", but often that is limited to the portholes in an airplane or from inside of a Humvee, and at the risk of your life. On top of that, there's still the mundane details of daily life: cleaning bills for intricately cared for uniforms, weekly hair cuts, the immaculate cleaning and care of the space you live - compound that with caring for a spouse and children. And did I mention the piles of bureaucratic paperwork, the career ladders to climb, the politics? That's there, too, and sometimes its cruelty runs a race with that of civilian corporations; sometimes the military wins that race.

Soldiers aren't faceless. They have hearts and souls - they have families and friends, hopes and dreams. Yet, many are expected to live as if they have no emotions at all. Often, they have to learn to cope with all their challenges alone. They also "get broken". It is a cruel way of saying that they've become injured or lived through trauma - basically, they cannot operate at "optimal levels" and their worth has been reduced to that of a misfit toy. Sometimes, they are altogether forgotten - until they are dumped back out into a world of civilians, most of whom have never faced the kinds of challenges and horrors that a soldier has faced. They expect sugared words and softened truths, not the harsh realities and blunt, in-your-face honesty they receive from a soldier.

It may sound like I understand, but I can tell you that I still don't. It's because I am still a civilian, despite being as close to a soldier as one can get without actually being one. 

 

Spouses probably come the closest of all civilians because they live and breathe a lot of the lifestyle, too. They know what it is like to live in military culture, being under the scrutiny of what seems like everyone. They know what it is like to laugh boldly in the face of some of the cruelest stereotypes. Spouses are the ones awake and alone at midnight, lighting candles in their windows or at their church. They are the ones raising children virtually alone for months (sometimes years) at a time, waiting for the return of a person that they love but may hardly recognize - physically or emotionally. They are the ones standing hand in hand in battle, if only in spirit, with their soldiers. No civilian has any idea what it really means to be a soldier's spouse either.

But, even then, despite our best efforts to try to understand, even we spouses really just don't get it. And heaven knows we try to understand - all the classes, all the counseling, all the support. Our men and women in uniform deserve so much credit, too, for their immense effort toward making it understandable, though I doubt it ever will be - not truly.

So to every generic civilian (and perhaps even spouse) who says "Oh, I get it", I'll tell you where to cram it - because you don't know it until you walk in those boots, fight in those boots, bleed in those boots, and sometimes die in those boots!

Current Preoccupations...

• I posted about Proverbs 31 the other day, but I think I am going to have to put that on the back burner. I ordered some books from Barnes & Noble (I know, I know. I hate them, but I had a gift card so I took advantage of it) and these new books have a higher priority. I got So Long, Insecurity: You've Been a Bad Friend to Us by Beth Moore (and oh, heck yes, I am linking you to Amazon for that one) and the associated devotional book. Some people have a bit of issue with Beth Moore, but I absolutely love her. She's a woman after my own heart and I love how her ministry really gets into a woman's perspective. I've had so many problems understanding what it means to be a woman and so much trouble learning how to be a "good" woman - and even more confusion as to what a Christian woman is all about. I didn't really have a great role model in my mother, and though I love my husband, being a woman really isn't something that he can teach me. I've closely watched other women in my life: my paternal grandmother, my step-mother, my paternal aunts, my mother-in-law, etc. It has helped, but learning about women in the Bible and learning about God's plan for women has been phenomenal. And Beth Moore's books and studies have resonated the most with me and have taught me the most.

• In all the confusion of all my moving around these last few years, I lost the comics I drew for my friend Lauren while we worked together at the casino. Today, I found a large portion of them, so I want to scan them and re-touch them. I might even expand some of them, but that really depends on how much time I have on my hands - time without the background music of a screaming, cranky toddler.

• I have a digital art project that has been "in the works" for months now. I am colouring the Asterodea Lineart by the talented Cat Craig, aka "Catzilla". It is going to be shiny and gloriously gaudy, because I seriously only just discovered masks in Photoshop! lol. Though, completion might wait until after taxes - we're looking at new laptops and rearranging our current computer uses. And it might be easier to do that than make the desktop computer that I am working on now art-friendly. :/

• I am working on uploading my recipes. I have a notebook template mocked up in Microsoft Publisher and I plan on offering a printable file for each recipe I post, plus a link back to wherever I found the recipe or was inspired to create it. Honestly, aside from the Beth Moore book above, this will probably be my priority until new laptops come in.

Aaaaaannnnnd, that's what I'm up to...

I've also been on a World of Warcraft break for about two months now, and I am not sure if I will be going back. Just getting that out there...

My Proverbs 31 Obsession

I don't remember when I first discovered The Virtuous Wife, but I have been in love with it for quite some time now. She is really an amazing woman, and it is no wonder that a mother would wish for her son to find such a wife! It's no wonder that a man would search for a woman!

Proverbs 31:10-31 - The Virtuous Wife 

Who can find a virtuous wife?
For her worth is far above rubies.
The heart of her husband safely trusts her;
So he will have no lack of gain.
She does him good and not evil
All the days of her life.
She seeks wool and flax,
And willingly works with her hands.
She is like the merchant ships,
She brings her food from afar.
She also rises while it is yet night,
And provides food for her household,
And a portion for her maidservants.
She considers a field and buys it;
From her profits she plants a vineyard.
She girds herself with strength,
And strengthens her arms.
She perceives that her merchandise is good,
And her lamp does not go out by night.
She stretches out her hands to the distaff,
And her hand holds the spindle.
She extends her hand to the poor,
Yes, she reaches out her hands to the needy.
She is not afraid of snow for her household,
For all her household is clothed with scarlet.
She makes tapestry for herself;
Her clothing is fine linen and purple.
Her husband is known in the gates,
When he sits among the elders of the land.
She makes linen garments and sells them,
And supplies sashes for the merchants.
Strength and honor are her clothing;
She shall rejoice in time to come.
She opens her mouth with wisdom,
And on her tongue is the law of kindness.
She watches over the ways of her household,
And does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children rise up and call her blessed;
Her husband also, and he praises her:
“Many daughters have done well,
But you excel them all.”
Charm is deceitful and beauty is passing,
But a woman who fears the Lord, she shall be praised.
Give her of the fruit of her hands,
And let her own works praise her in the gates.

Recently, I have felt compelled to participate in a bible study or devotional about the Proverbs 31 wife. Most women, myself included, find the Virtuous Wife to be incredibly intimidating, so I am curious to read the suggestions that other women have for being more like this amazing woman!

So, I have scoured the internet for any decently formatted study or devotional. And I've found a few:

• Liberty University's Online Ministries: Virtuous Fear (free download)
• Pursuit of Proverbs 31 eBook (approx $3.99 at Amazon, old [possibly incomplete] version here)
• Women Living Well's Proverbs 31 eBook (sign up for the email list to get the link for it)

I'm gonna work through them and see how they turn out... I promise to post about it. :D