I haven't done either of the things that i am presently doing in quite sometime, but here goes. There has been a gentleman coming into the shop over the past month or so and requesting for me to make him a dream catcher that is like the one hanging in the back of the shop. I told him that I would make it as soon as I got myself out in nature and collect the supplies that would be needed. Needless to say, I haven't fulfilled that mission yet, but it has been so long since I had made a dream catcher, I felt that he was nudging me to get back to it.
These past few days I have been down and out with a really bad head cold. Funny thing is, whenever someone states that they have a cold, myself included, I always think or say, "see old issues", let's be honest, it really wasn't something that I wanted to do, but then again, who does? insert laugh. Anyway, stay focused Nanci, after being married to the couch for a few days, yesterday was the first day that I was up and moving around. After getting my coffee, I began with my daily card pull, and the first one pulled was creativity. After rolling my eyes and stating, "yeah, I don't think so," I moved on to doing back office work for the shop. Now for anyone that knows me, as grateful as I am for this amazing creation, the back stuff isn't one of my favorite things, but must be done....Amidst doing aforementioned task, I felt a surge of creative energy, but chalked it up to avoiding what I had to get done. Fast forward to about 9pm and after getting settled in, I finally listened, dug deep into my craft boxes, and finding a curtain that I had been looking for, I began working on a dream catcher.
I rapidly began this journey and as I was weaving, I decided to add some of the beads that I purchased from Tucson many moons ago. I would add a bead and skip two spaces, I did this until I had six beads on each section. I felt that the energy of this piece was female and she was telling me to add another bead to each section which entitled her "35". Interesting enough, 35 was the age when I felt like my life was spiraling out of control and as I looked at the beginning stages of this "catcher" a spiral was beginning to form. Which brings us to stage 2.
I decided to add a branch, first below than above, added more bells, took some away, added more beads, well that part remained the same, added more rope, took some away, lengthened then cut. As I continued creating this piece, I kept thinking about my life back then and how out of whack it was, how unbalanced it was, how not "normal" i believed it to be, and then I looked at this "dream catcher" and the first words that rolled from my lips were, "it's beautiful". It is a little off kilter, the beads with bells aren't perfectly aligned, but when put all together, it truly is an amazing piece of artwork. It is a true reminder that our lives may spin out of control for whatever reason, but eventually we will catch our breath, we will be balanced, whatever that may look like. Your balance may not be mine and vice versa, but ultimately this dream catcher is a reminder that eventually life will present itself with the gift of finding the beauty in the chaos, finding beauty in the moments when we are able to catch our breath, finding comfort in the knowing that you did the best that you were capable of at that time...a balance of surrender, a balance of forgiveness and most importantly, a balance of self-love with all of the crazy.
Each and everyone of us has created our own definition of balance and what that looks like to you is what is most important. For so many years, I was so focused on what things looked like from the outside when ultimately, a dream catcher at 2am made me realize that as unbalanced as I believed my life to be at that time, and believe me on some level it was, but it was my life and it was the best balance that I was able to do at that time. So if you are in the midst of feeling unbalanced, please take a moment and embrace it, because I believe you to be more balanced than you may believe you are and trust me, it truly is beautiful.