So I've really discovered that I just like to make things. I mean, I knew this before, but lately, it seems to become more and more prominent in my life. I've taken a car hub cap and turned it into a clock, painted old orange juice containers and made them into vases, and well... I'm an art major, so when am I NOT making something?
This urge to create things has spilled into cooking as well. Now, it's not like I never had a desire to cook. There were just no urges on my part and in the past few years, I didn't really have my own kitchen to use to cook. And even then, I was trying to save money on food and spend as little as possible. And with my busy college life, cooking a meal just never seemed to fit in. But now, I really desire to cook and to do it well. There's a couple of reasons for this.
One is that I really miss having family dinners and I enjoy people coming over and eating together. I wanted to be able to cook for people and have them come over and enjoy the food I made, or even we made together. I did it a few times over the summer and loved sitting around a table with good food and friends. It just warms my heart.
Second, I have many friends who love to cook and watching them and observing what they did, I finally decided to give it a shot myself. Over the summer, I watched my friend Kim cook here and there, my friend Adam and I have cooked together a few times, and I've often seen my friend Kara make all sorts of things and she inspires me to try tons of new recipes and points me in the right direction.
So with this inspiration and a desire to bring people together, I began cooking more and more on my own. Now, I'm no pro at all. Just dabbing here and there and reading all sorts of random recipes online, trying to figure out what to try to make. But as I was cooking a few nights ago, I realized how much I was enjoying myself. It wasn't an ecstatic "YES!", but more of a calming and soothing feeling as I cooked. My friend Maju was coming over for dinner and he cooks all the time, so I was hoping to please him with my cooking skills, and my sister was also coming home soon for dinner. For that full hour, I was absorbed in cooking the vegetables and rice and chicken, and setting up the table, and even making some hummus and cutting up apples. And at the very end, I was just happy that I was going to get to eat it and that I was using the ingredients in my own home. I was making something for me and it was going to be something I enjoyed. This is something that doesn't always happen that often. As an art major, a downside is that I'm always making things for everyone else, and not really for me or something that I'm even proud of. It's a hard dilemma I've come across lately.
Anyways, I just really enjoy being engulfed in a process of creation. From cooking to artwork, there's just something so exciting and often calming about the whole process. And it's especially awesome when you have complete freedom to do whatever you want in the process. You get to pour a piece of yourself into the work.
There was a brief instance the other day when I was working on a group project and had to draw a room we were designing. It started off as a basic, simple perspective drawing, but there was a moment where I sat back and looked at it. And an excitement that I hadn't experience in a while rose up. I was excited about this piece of work and looking forward to how it would turn out. I was happy and curious as I stared at my drawing, and I couldn't wait to see what it would turn out to be.
I often imagine this is just a tiny spec of how God felt when he began creating us. From the moment He began to imagine us in his mind, a sense of excitement and deep love began to grow. As someone who makes things all the time and puts a lot of time into pieces of art, I know the feeling of love and ownership one feels towards a piece of work quite well. The excitement you feel when you begin the piece, as you become engulfed in the process, and look at the finished piece, yet knowing that no art is ever quite perfect, but loving it all that much more. A piece of you is with that work. And to people who often look at art, you really do see the person's personality come out of the artwork.
I love creating and making things. Whether it's cooking, artwork, putting a bookshelf together, etc. There's jut something I love about being engulfed in a process and putting all of my mind and energy that leads to something completely new. This is one of the best ways I relate to God, the first and best artist and creator of them all. I can only begin to imagine the time and energy he spent on us and how much love he feels towards us.
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