Christmas and Hanukkah Paperdolls

Well, I did exactly what I usually do when I end up near a scanner, with spare time, paper and pencils. I made paperdolls for my own amusement. I decided that I might as well share them with you.
Here they are:

 

(I’d like to add that I borrowed the poses for these dolls from Rachel Cohen’s FANTASTIC paperdoll website, Paper Thin Personas. They are loosely based off of her Pixie and Puck series. Click here to check out her designs. Please note that the Christmas theme is my own and was not endorsed in anyway by Rachel. She does not celebrate Christmas and I have no wish to offend her.)

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Learning how to grow with my faith…

I keep looking for my faith to feel the way it did when I was younger. It isn’t happening.

Don’t get me wrong- this isn’t what I would  term a crisis of faith. I haven’t given up on God. I am not turning my back on Christianity.

 It’s just that my faith fits different than it used to. You know the feeling you get when you try on a favorite pair of jeans after you go on a diet? Suddenly they are looser and you almost feel like you are breaking them in all over again. It isn’t BAD, but it is uncomfortable and awkward. You still love your jeans, but you have to learn how to wear them again.

Okay, so maybe I’m stretching the analogy a bit far, but you get the idea.

I love God. I am serving Him the best that I know how. But now, I need to find that new place of relationship, a different level of intimacy, new territory, with harder rules.

…and that’s where I’m at, folks…

I Believe in _________, just call me a __________.

Plinky asked me the question: “Would you describe yourself as spiritual, religious, or something else?”

 

 

 

I define myself as relational. I believe that God created us for relationship with Him and each other. In essence, that sums up our existence. We live to love.

 

That said, I also define myself as a Christian. I personally don’t like the title “religious”, because religion is a framework created by man to try and reach a higher state. Christianity is all about trusting God and developing a romance with Him. I prefer not to use the title “spiritual” either, mainly because THAT can get confused with spiritualist, which I am not.

 

Now, I realize that many people have issues with being called “Christian” and some argue that we should just scrap the name and start over. I don’t buy that. How about we just live in such a way, that we positively redefine “Christian”?

 

I don’t want people to hear “what I am” and naturally assume that I am corny, outdated, frumpy-looking, unrealistic, a pessimist, a bigot, or boring.

 

I want people to get to know me as a person, then, if they happen to ask, “What are you?”, I’ll tell them. And maybe the next time they hear someone is a Christian, they might have a more open idea of what that might look like.

 

Who knows? It could be a wacky person who likes poetry and Emo-rock, lives in jeans and hates Southern Gospel music. Or not…

 

-Just a thought