I Have No Swirly Skillz

Friday night, Chad graciously agreed to keep all the children so that I could go out with my girlfriends.  We went to Sips-N-Strokes a fairly new place here in town were you paint under the direction of an instructor but end up leaving with your own personal creation.  No prior painting or being crafty experience needed, thank goodness, right girls?

Ahh...here we are with our clean white canvases ready to get started, my how I love a clean slate and a fresh start. The possibilites are endless, aren't they?  I wish we had all felt that way.  Since 4 out the 5 of us were Sips-N-Strokes nubies, we were all worried that our pictures weren't even going to be fit to hang in our garages.

After lots of, "What did she say?"  "What do we do next?"  "Do we use the fat brush or the skinny brush?"  and "She's going too fast, slow down," we finally made it to the halfway point and everyone was feeling good about their paintings.

Then came the actual drawing of the crosses onto our paintings.  Y'all should have seen the look on people's faces, it was priceless.  Our instructor was truly doing the best she could with what she had to work with and by that I mean "us."  All kinds of instructions like "line this up just above center" and "now turn your painting on it's side" and "continue making little swirlies all around that center circle" were thrown at us.  Needless to say, albeit fun, the drawing of the crosses got all of our blood pressures up and left all of us feeling, at the time, unsure of our paintings.  In fact, one of my friends, in a moment of frustration declared "I have no swirly skillz."  Oh, it was too funny b/c there was actually quite a bit of swirly painting required of us.  Not to worry though, everyone's swirly skillz were just perfect and unique to their own paintings and we all ended up with beautiful paintings that were very worthy of hanging anywhere but the garage.

Aren't they pretty, they really turned out well and it was a fun evening.  You can't see it in the above picture, but in the background of the painting are the words to the old hymn "The Old Rugged Cross."  This beautiful song holds so many memories for me, I most closely associate it with my precious grandmother.  I remember the Sundays that I got to sit with her and my grandfather in the church that I grew up in singing out of the hymnal.  Remember the hymnal and how we used to have to actually turn to the right page to see the words to the songs in which we would then sing the 1st, 2nd and 4th stanzas?  Y'all know y'all remember and why did we always leave out the 3rd stanza?  I still don't know why, but we always did, anyway I am getting seriously off track here.  I would listen to that sweet lady sing in her off key way, it's true, my grandmother couldn't sing to save her life, but she did anyway and I gauarantee you it was music to her Savior's ears as it was to mine.  My grandmother went to be with Jesus when I was in the 8th grade and "The Old Rugged Cross" was played when we laid her to rest and I have yet been able to sing that song through since.

If I haven't conveyed it yet, that song brings up some powerful emotions in me first of all b/c of what my Savior did on the old rugged cross.  Secondly, because of that I know that my grandmother and now my grandfather are praising Him together at this very moment and I also know that my family will be there with them one day as well thanking Jesus, in person, for what He did for us on the old rugged cross.