Discover God's Fingerprints in Your Past

We didn’t really have the money. I am unsure how I even ended up making art in that dark basement.

We lived in a small southern town in the early 80’s and the only extracurricular activities were tennis, softball, and basketball for girls. Oh, you could learn piano…which I tried for 3 years. I can play the first few stanzas of The Entertainer. And that lady scared me to death. Not my cup of tea.

Mom was raising three girls predominantly by herself. There was no money for unnecessary expenses. But somehow (I need to ask Mom) I took art lessons from Mrs. Hyman.

She was a larger-than-life individual whose home was filled (every surface and crevice) with art and knick-knacks. Think crafty hoarder. We had class in her basement. It was my very first experience with creating. Back then, we had very few art opportunities even at school. Honestly, all I remember is creating a poster every year to promote our school’s big fundraiser, Pancake Day, that the school would hang all over town as an advertisement. Some of my better poster themes were:

• Fly your way to Pancake Day (kite flying with Pancake Day written on it.)

• It’s all over town so get on down!

• Skate your way to Pancake Day (me in skates) I think I thought it had to rhyme with “Day”

(Can I add these to my “art show” list?)

So taking Mrs. Hyman’s classes was a real treat. Despite the mildew smell that all West Tennessee basements have and the fact that there was absolutely no natural light, I loved that class.  I am sure that was the first time I painted with anything other than those super cheap plastic watercolor sets and the brushes that splayed open after the first use.

Looking back I laugh at our painting projects. Precut boards shaped like shields and we used stencils to paint mallard ducks. (Don’t laugh, you know the one if you grew up when I did.) We painted the edges of the shield with our choice of colors and painstakingly dobbed colors on those stencils just praying that we didn’t lean our dobbers too far to the right and the left and mess up our whole piece. The pressure was real.

Just this past year I had two of those art pieces from that very first art class come back to me after 40-plus years. The first was when my mom downsized. Our youngest daughter was helping me clean out my stepfather’s borderline hoarder office. We rarely went into the office but it was our job to navigate what to keep and what not to keep. As we took the items off the walls Elizabeth showed me a duck painting. She asked about it. I was shocked. It had been a gift to my grandmother and it had sat on a shelf in her living room for decades. I suppose when they cleaned out her house he claimed it and hung it on the wall in his office! And when Elizabeth heard the story she asked if she could have it. Tears. 3 people valuing little Betsy’s art.

Our dad passed away in 2019. Only recently we received a box of his items. While my sisters and I were going through them we found a framed piece that was gray mailbox with daisies growing all around it and on the mailbox was our maiden name, Sadlak. I had given that painting to Dad for his birthday all those years ago. I cried. He had treasured it…and it came back to me. It is now in my studio reminding me it was special to him.

But that mailbox is beautiful to me for another reason too. Mom made a way for me to get started. Someone sacrificed for me to take an art class. And the sacrifice was multi-layered. There was the money issue, we didn’t need to spend on art classes. And I had to get to class and be picked up by a mom navigating 3 daughters and running her own business.  But she made it happen.

Mom had no idea when she was blessing me with this opportunity that one day I would teach art, travel across the world to study art (more on that later), and then return to art as a career. (I had no idea either.)

I don’t write this as an encouragement to parents that they need to get their kids in all the things and make sure they try every single activity, out of fear, that they might miss the one thing that they need. We are far too busy these days. Honestly, parents are sacrificing their own lives on the alter of kids’ activities. We need to shift this societal pressure into one that works from rest.

Click HERE to read more on that.

I share this because it amazes me that one of the few activities I participated in has blessed me throughout my entire life.  I hated piano. I only played church league softball because it was one of the few things I got to do with my sister.  But neither of us were athletes. But my relationship with art continued to unfold through all the years.

I wonder, have you seen this happen in your life? Was there a seed of something planted in your early days that took root and bears fruit even now? What is something that sparked an interest in your heart and mind that God used to encourage you? You may not have ever considered this. It is so sweet to consider where God has been at work in our lives, maybe even before we knew who He was.

Take time to pray and look for the ways He has been at work on your behalf that you may have missed before.

You may just be surprised at where seeds were sown and you didn’t even realize it!