I've been working hard to get my graphics blog up and running. As I was creating the posts, it occurred to me what an awesome process it has been. And my God has created this whole story, so I need to bring to him the credit due him.
The very beginning of the story was a day many years ago when I received an email from my cousin Carlene, in which she had put an animated smiley. Email was still relatively new in those days, and never before had I seen any kind of graphic in one, so this little smiley opened up in my mind all kinds of questions. I emailed her and asked "how in the world did you do that?" And she replied that she had no knowledge on the subject, but that she just followed step one, step two, and step three as a computer tech showed her.
Well! I was determined to find out how this was done, and thus my search for knowledge in graphics was born. I began searching the internet for animated graphics to put into my emails. I emailed a few people asking "how to" questions, and the consensus was that you need a graphics program to create your own animated graphics. Well in those days, the graphics programs were very expensive, so I resigned myself to using graphics others had made and had posted onto the internet. I found a free graphics-editing program on the internet and thought I had found gold! This program allowed you to crop, recolor, and resize animated graphics, and I spent many, many, MANY hours playing with it and absorbing understanding of how it all works.
One day, I stumbled upon a site with beautiful graphics, both animated and still, and after emailing the site owner I found that many people working with graphics were using a program called "Paint Shop Pro." Well ....I searched and found it, but behold ....it was expensive. I couldn't justify spending that much on something I had no idea if I'd be able to use. One thing that particularly appealed to me was that this program had an animation sub-program in it. I found the Paint Shop Pro site and emailed them asking if I could buy just the animation sub-program. No. Oh well. However, when I talked this over with my daughter Sherry, she suggested that we buy it together. In those days, you could make a copy of a CD, so we could each have one copy. So that's what we did. We each paid half and now we're both able to use it. I'm still thinking, of course, that I only want the animation program. Little did I know..... For now, though, I immersed myself in learning how to modify animated graphics, and what that consisted of was simply importing graphics others had made and learning how to edit them in Animation Shop.
Fast forwarding.....
I was at my sister's house in California one day, and we had gone down to the ocean to walk on the beach. On this particular day I was very troubled. I couldn't overcome a fault I saw in myself, and it was tormenting me. I poured out my whole heart to my sister. Finally, we left and went back to her house. When I checked my email, I found one that someone had sent that grabbed my heartstrings. This was a beautiful photo that someone had put inspirational words onto. Incredibly, the words were exactly addressing the very things I had been troubled with. I forwarded the email to my sister and we were both just in awe that this message so personally ministered to me, and we KNEW God had prompted it because the timing and personal-ness would have been impossible to have occurred by chance.
But Eureka! A new ministry was born. When I realized the power this had to minister to me when I was so down, I found a desire in my heart to learn how to do the same and provide beautiful inspirational messages that I could send to others and hopefully be an encouragement to them as had been done to me. So now ......it was time to start learning Paint Shop Pro. Not the animation sub-program, but Paint Shop Pro itself. So. I bought "Paint Shop Pro For Dummies," and began trying to learn the program. No way hosay, I couldn't even understand the words they were using. So I went and bought "Paint Shop Pro For Absolute Idiots." Well this was a bit better, but it still was way beyond me. What to do! Well .....one day as I sat at my computer experimenting and desperately trying to understand what they were attempting to teach me, I came to the end of my ability and said, "Father, I need help. This is just beyond me." And shortly after that, a thought came into my mind, "search for Paint Shop Pro tutorials on the internet." So I did a search and much to my surprise, there were tons of them. So I opened one and took a look at it, but it was just more of the same, what I had been trying to learn in my books, but couldn't. So this wasn't going to help, and again I was ready to just put it all up. But then, another thought came to mind, "search for Paint Shop Pro BEGINNER tutorials." Ok. I typed those words in. And had another Eureka! moment as beginner tutorials filled my computer screen. And thus my graphics education was launched. I spent the next several YEARS learning more and more and more in Paint Shop Pro, and began putting out beautiful art work similar to the one that had so ministered to me that first day after our walk on the beach. I was in my glory, HOW I loved learning everything I could learn on this subject.
Fast forwarding a couple more years now...
One morning a friend emailed me with a link to something called a "blog." I had never heard the word, and had no clue what a blog was. But I followed the link because it was concerning something I was very interested in. I came to this person's "blog," and spent some time looking over it. This was something entirely new to me. As I was about to leave the site, I noticed the words, "Create a Blog." I clicked on it to see what would happen, and to my amazement discovered that it was free, and I just might be able to have my own site online. My heart pounding, I followed the directions and could hardly believe it -- there MUST be a catch -- there I sat staring at my own web site. I hardly moved from that chair for the next month as I studied all about this new tool and endeavored to learn all I could about it. Again, it was difficult because I didn't have anyone to ask questions of when I got stuck. But I stayed with it because I knew this was going to open up to me a whole world of possibilities.
It's been so awesome since then. I now have FIVE blogs, plus others that are extensions of one or another of them, and spend most of my time either writing or creating inspirational pictures to put on them. It hasn't been easy, because from the beginning I have had no one to ask questions of, so when I got stuck I stayed stuck for a long time, until finding the solution to whatever problem I ran into, and there have been MANY. However later on, the Lord provided me with a couple friends in the "blogosphere" who made suggestions and pointed me in the right directions to resources I've used to vastly improve my blogs.
Some people like golf. I don't. Some people like fish. I don't. God has made us as unique as our fingerprints. There is no one in the universe who could be a better YOU than YOU. God has placed within each of us gifts, talents, interests, and personalities that only HE can develop to the fullest. If I had to bat a ball around I'd go insane. If I had to go fishing or, God forbid, eat fish, I'd pine away. If I had to live in Alaska I'd sink into depression. But there are people on earth who love these things immensely. That doesn't make them bad or good, these aren't qualitative things, they're just the outworkings of who they are. I've always been a computer operator. On one job, my boss's boss said to me one day, "I don't understand how you can stand sitting in front of this computer all day." The truth is, I don't understand how anyone could NOT want to do the same. Because the way I am is the way God made me, and I couldn't be happier working at these things daily. It's life to me, whereas it might be death to someone else.
But God knew all that of course, it's the way he made me. And he developed my story over many years, slowly, slowly bringing me into a learning process that has become my delight in life. Oh, that reminds me -- I think I should have started this story even earlier. Let me tell that part too. Gotta back up to tell this part.
At one point in my life I found myself a single parent and facing the necessity of having to go to work. I didn't know how to proceed. Then I discovered a government program purposing to train people such as me to find work the most suitable to us. There was only one door open to me. They had a computer training course and wanted to know if I'd take it. Oh boy! You have to understand that this was in the early days of personal computers. I had no idea what they were, and could only think of my former husband's electronics textbooks, and I knew I absolutely did NOT want to learn electronics. So I resisted and asked God to open a different door for me. But nothing else opened. I prayed some more and asked friends to pray with me. Nothing else opened. I was petrified. But I had to tell the CETA office that I'd go to the course, it was the only door open. I had to compete with 60 others for one of the 16 seats available. I dreaded to think this was what God wanted for me. I told him that if this were from him, I'd have to let him confirm that by having me pass the tests and get one of those seats. But I was NOT going to brush up for the exam, because I just hated the thought of passing and having to learn
electronics, errrrrr, I mean, computers. Same thing, I thought.
Well of course, I passed and found myself sitting with 15 other people in a classroom that had one computer, an Apple IIE. I was so downhearted. So uninterested. And the first few days were terrible. I didn't understand a word the teacher said. I wanted to just drop out, but my mother suggested I give it a full week, so I decided I could at least do that. Well .....the fog cleared and I began to understand, and then understand more, and then rise to the top of the class. Little did I realize that the Lord had laid the foundation for the rest of my life. My interest grew, and grew, and grew, until I found myself with a computer in my own home, a Commodore 64, and the world of computing became what I "do" ---- for the rest of my life. Every job I've worked since then has been a computer job. To say that I love computing would be an understatement. The possibilities are endless. I don't do just one thing on the computer, I've found endless possibilities out there, all somehow related to my goal, which is to glorify the Lord in all I do, and to be an inspiration and encouragement to others. The sky's the limit. At any one time, I usually have four or five different programs open, going back and forth in them in whatever project I'm doing.
To anyone reading this I want to say this: God has made you totally unique. There is only one of you on this earth, you're as unique as your fingerprints. He has put within you your interests, talents and gifts, and all your personality traits. He has a plan for your life, and if you seek him, you will find that all that you are has been made to fulfill his plan for your life. Life is SUCH an adventure when you're walking in HIS plan for you. In mine, I've been taken to the other side of the world and back, entirely funded by him. Every day is a new challenge with new opportunities to find fulfillment in what he provides for unique me. Is the cost worth it? Oh yes, there IS a cost, because he demands total surrender and you'll oftentimes find yourself in a part of your story that you absolutely do not understand. At times like those, you have to walk in blind faith. But once you've been tried and tested, opportunities will open up to you beyond your wildest dreams. And the end result is a fantastic adventure, walking with the Creator of the universe who is totally in love with you. Nothing else could possibly fulfill you more than his plan for your life. If you choose not to go that way, you're on your own. Your life will be only the walking out of what you think YOU can do to fulfill yourself. At the end you'll find that you missed it, because nothing of your own doing can provide the total satisfaction and joy that can come ONLY through a walk with your Creator. But should you choose to walk with him, on his terms, you'll finish with a satisfaction you never would have believed possible, and an awe at this God who knows you so thoroughly and seeks only to develop your full potential according to everything he has uniquely placed within you. Go for it. You won't be sorry you did!
