I started my next painting last week after trying in vain to get the first five printed at work. I was finally able to get the printing done last night and with any luck will have everything up at the yogurt shop tomorrow.

The giclee’s didn’t turn out too bad, not as nice as I would have liked, but good considering the photographs were a little low res for the print process. Once I get my originals back I will scan them a portion at a time and see if I can get original that work better.

This experience has been interesting, sometimes frightening, sometimes exhausting, and always emotional. It’s not unlike standing in front of someone naked, in the middle of winter, after a cold shower, 100 pounds overweight, bathed in fluorescent lighting, on a stage. Honestly, it is a very vulnerable insecure self loathing critical thinking judgmental place putting ones artwork out for all the world to stare and point fingers at. It makes me really nervous and yet I am compelled to start websites like RohrFineArt.com to invite even more strangers to stare at my nakedness from the comfort of their own home.

Why do I do this to myself?

Why do I feel so repulsed yet compelled to create? Why do I stand up in front of hundreds each week and sing my heart out and get completely lost in the moment and act a fool only then to consider what I must look look like acting the fool and shudder at my vulnerability and do it all again next week? Why do I paint pictures and hang them in public spaces inviting people to be critical and then live in fear they might actually have an opinion and in response to that fear invite more people to criticize?

I have come to the conclusion that I can’t help myself.

I am fatally drawn to create by the Creator and His passion and love for me is something I can no longer control. I am being pulled along, overtaken, swept up in the swift current of this great romance and drowning in the conviction that His affection toward me is real. In that place, face to face, the reflection of me through gentle eyes is so lovely, so pure, so sweet and intoxicating I willingly let go of my last breath of self perception and inhale His.

I don’t understand it, I can’t adequately describe it, but I know it is real becuase the version of me, the idea of me, the one I find when I am caught up with Him is so not from me. I know what I think about me, I have spent a lifetime creating this visage and I know all too well the way I can detest it. My me and God’s me are quite disparate at times. My me and God’s me would not be friends most days. My me and God’s me would argue almost all the time about almost everything. My me and God’s me are worlds apart most days but my me and God’s me are getting to know each other.

I guess that might be the point of it all in the end, getting to know God’s me instead of my me.

So with fear and trepidation I drop the layers of my me and step on stages to become naked so that I can put on God’s me.

I went out and bought this book yesterday after watching a podcast on ibethel.tv of the author. I read it in one day, which is very unusual for me, and loved it! This book has some of the most honest diolague about understanding and overcoming pain.

An amazingly beautiful story of the love of Pa Pa.

He really, really loves you.

How do I know this? Because He keeps telling me. To the point of distraction. That He loves -

You.

In fact, He shouts it so loudly that most days it is all I can do to function normally – whatever that is.

I am not being melodramatic here, even though I am prone to it, He really, really loves you and I need you to know it.

I wish I was better at conveying the love He has for you, but most days I forget myself. I strive and I work and I push and I, well I just don’t remember who I am. It is easy to forget who we are. Life has a way of poking holes in us and draining us until all that is left is an anemic shell moving out of momentum and not purpose.

I know the shell, I have lived in the shell for much of my life.

The thing is, that’s not real life! That’s not even life when you get down to it, that is just, well, it is just sad and was never part of the plan.

The plan was family.

The plan was children.

The plan was fellowship.

The plan was love.

You know what? That is still the plan.

And it starts with a simple understanding that God is Daddy. God is Pa Pa. God is Father. God is really, really happy with you and really, really loves you because it is all He talks about.

All He talks about is You!

With your faults, regrets, fear, pain and bitterness. Your love and fear, good and bad and all you do that is wrong. Your anger and selflessness, jealousy and kindness and all you do that is right. He hears you when you laugh, sees you when you cry, and tenderly holds you when you are broken because he is your Daddy.

You are His Son.

You are His Daughter.

And as His child, there is nothing you can do to make Him love you any more, or any less.

So just for today, stop and hold out your hands and ask Him to show you. Just do it, don’t talk yourself out of it, right now as you read this, ask Pa Pa to speak to you. Ask Daddy to tell you what He tells me.

About you.

Please, just try it.

For me.