Was thinking of art and craft for piggy banks for my student care project when I had a flashback memory during my homeschool years. In that vague flashback, I saw one piggy bank, painted with an array of water colours. And there’s another one, a hippo, beautifully painted a mix of dirty green, irregular strokes of yellow and brown distorting it.

Beautiful? It sounds more like ugly than it would be considered pleasing to the eye. But I remembered it as beautiful, because my mom told me so.

You see, these piggy/hippo banks were small merchandises my mom was helping to sell, and she brought them home for us to see. They came in various animals, made of plaster and there was a set of water colours in red blue and yellow to decorate them with. We being kids, excitedly wanted to give it a try, and my mom gave(bought) us two.

The water colours however weren’t of pretty good quality, expected much eh, and while trying to paint my first hippo, I used too much water and the colours started to run. The more I tried to salvage it, the worse it got. The combination of the three colours formed a brown mix that ran lines down the side patches of colours. I got panicky and flustered at the failure it was becoming. I turned to my mom, with this morose look, unsure of what I was to do with myself. (You know the way we relate our works with who we are)

In my mom face, I saw this spark twinkle in her eyes. With a comforting smile in her face, she excitedly took up my hippo and a paintbrush and started doing her thing. Well, in my opinion back then, I thought she was kinda making it look worse HAHA. After giving it a final touch up, she held the hippo high up and exclaimed how pretty it was. Well I genuinely thought it still look dam ugly, like a yellow hippo that lived in a sewage pipe.

But with the sincerity in her eyes, and the feel of her unpretentious words, somehow the acceptance flowed in, and it didn’t matter if it looked like some art failure, it was her child, and just as it is, anything was beautiful already. And it’s funny how I got suddenly reminded by little things these days, brings a tear to my eyes.

But something else came to mind too, for all who have troubled relationships with their parents, or that your parent have being the ones to have hurt your esteem. For all those people out there, there’s still someone who loves you the way you are, for who you are. No matter the mistakes, no matter how broken, no matter how screwed up a mess you may be, He still watches over you with the same unchanging love every day. God loves His children, beautifully, wonderfully, and purposefully made.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

Psalms 139:14

We are precious and lovely because He made us, and not what we’ve made of ourselves.

God bless you with this song.

Labels: God, love, memories, thoughts

Was thinking of art and craft for piggy banks for my student care project when I had a flashback memory during my homeschool years. In that vague flashback, I saw one piggy bank, painted with an array of water colours. And there’s another one, a hippo, beautifully painted a mix of dirty green, irregular strokes of yellow and brown distorting it.

Beautiful? It sounds more like ugly than it would be considered pleasing to the eye. But I remembered it as beautiful, because my mom told me so.

You see, these piggy/hippo banks were small merchandises my mom was helping to sell, and she brought them home for us to see. They came in various animals, made of plaster and there was a set of water colours in red blue and yellow to decorate them with. We being kids, excitedly wanted to give it a try, and my mom gave(bought) us two.

The water colours however weren’t of pretty good quality, expected much eh, and while trying to paint my first hippo, I used too much water and the colours started to run. The more I tried to salvage it, the worse it got. The combination of the three colours formed a brown mix that ran lines down the side patches of colours. I got panicky and flustered at the failure it was becoming. I turned to my mom, with this morose look, unsure of what I was to do with myself. (You know the way we relate our works with who we are)

In my mom face, I saw this spark twinkle in her eyes. With a comforting smile in her face, she excitedly took up my hippo and a paintbrush and started doing her thing. Well, in my opinion back then, I thought she was kinda making it look worse HAHA. After giving it a final touch up, she held the hippo high up and exclaimed how pretty it was. Well I genuinely thought it still look dam ugly, like a yellow hippo that lived in a sewage pipe.

But with the sincerity in her eyes, and the feel of her unpretentious words, somehow the acceptance flowed in, and it didn’t matter if it looked like some art failure, it was her child, and just as it is, anything was beautiful already. And it’s funny how I got suddenly reminded by little things these days, brings a tear to my eyes.

But something else came to mind too, for all who have troubled relationships with their parents, or that your parent have being the ones to have hurt your esteem. For all those people out there, there’s still someone who loves you the way you are, for who you are. No matter the mistakes, no matter how broken, no matter how screwed up a mess you may be, He still watches over you with the same unchanging love every day. God loves His children, beautifully, wonderfully, and purposefully made.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.

Psalms 139:14

We are precious and lovely because He made us, and not what we’ve made of ourselves.

God bless you with this song.

Labels: God, love, memories, thoughts