The GRACE Pages - a Purpose
I love art journaling but sometimes I need a place to make messy art, where there are no expectations or desired outcomes…where I can show up and allow my raw, real, and often complex emotions to pour out onto the page without needing my art to be or look a certain way, all while in the presence of God.
That’s where The GRACE Pages come in.
In The GRACE Pages, nothing has to be tidy, nothing has to make sense, nothing even has to be finished. In fact, I have several unfinished pages - each a snapshot of a moment when emotions were heavy or hard. Often times in these emotional moments, there is no tidy little bow, no resolution to the pain, and my art becomes a reflection of that.
Inspired by the raw emotional honesty in the Psalms and specifically Psalm 62:8:
“O my people, trust him all the time. Pour out your longings before him, for he can help!”
The GRACE Pages provide space for all of our longings, fear, anxious thoughts, uncertainty, wrestlings, as well as the joy, praise, gratitude, and peace we hold when we show up to the page.
Many of my art journaling pages had / have an ultimate goal of being pleasant looking. Though I often don’t know the direction they’ll take while in the middle of my creative process, they almost always require action toward making them somewhat pretty upon their completion. Pretty colors here, a tidy scripture there.
The GRACE Pages serve a different purpose. They are a place where anything is welcome but it has to be honest. Where grief takes shape. Where sadness is a color, anger is a scribble, doubt has scraggly edges on random collage scraps layered upon other layers.
The GRACE Pages - a Rhythm
I love a good acronym and so I created The GRACE Pages as an acronym that can help get you started when you’re facing a fresh new journal page.
This framework is a guide, but not a formula and every step doesn’t have to reach a particular emotional outcome. It’s also important to say that The GRACE Pages are not a place to fix yourself, but yet a place where you can be honest. This practice creates room for expression, awareness, and prayer, but it doesn’t promise that every page will bring relief or resolution. God is the One True Healer. This is simply a tool.
So, I’ll walk you through each step and I’ve created a FREE PRINT OUT so you can pin it up in your creative space and have the framework in front of you.
G — GIVE EXPRESSION
Let what's within you find a form on the page. There are no rules or expectations. This is where you pay attention to what feels good in the moment and go with it. Scribbling, ripping and glueing, swirling paint colors, layering different marks and swatches.
R — RECOGNIZE WHAT’S WITHIN
Notice what surfaces without judging or rushing to interpret it. This is hard at first. Most of us want to judge our thoughts or emotions. But we can practice just letting them be whatever they are. I often need to use a Feelings Wheel to help me name what I’m feeling. And I will often pause for several breaths to notice where I’m feeling sensations in my body. Anxiety is almost always in my chest/lungs, shoulders, and jaw. Grief I usually feel in my heart. And humiliation, in my stomach. Side note: it took me a long time to differentiate those somatically and I worked with a therapist to help me.
A — ABIDE IN GOD’S PRESENCE
Bring your honest experience to God. This was also challenging for me at first. I didn’t realize how long I’d been lying to myself about how I was feeling. I would just ‘bulldoze’ over my true feelings because they felt like “too much” or were too painful or I would try to feel the way I thought I “should feel” even when I didn’t really feel that way. I also didn’t realize how long I’d ignored some of the hardest emotions because they were too painful to sit in.
The important thing to remember here, is that some emotions are painful, but we are not alone in feeling them. God knows us fully and loves us deeply, despite anything we are feeling.
C — CONSIDER IN LIGHT OF TRUTH
Make room for Scripture and what you know of God's character. Here’s where our co-laboring with the Holy Spirit comes into play. Despite how we feel, there is still a solid foundation of truth that anchors us and the Holy Spirit is there to remind us. Even when we feel far from God’s truth or character, we can cling to what we know is true. This is not spiritual bypassing or throwing a scripture at our problems. This is a reminder about what is real and true when our thoughts leave us feeling scattered, uncertain, and scared.
E — EMBRACE YOUR IDENTITY IN CHRIST
Receive the belovedness that is already yours in Him. OK, this one was the hardest one for me. This often involves our faith moving from our heads to our hearts and for many Christians, that journey is a life-long process. But it helps to logically understand that our belovedness is there, waiting for us to receive it. It’s truly up to us to step into it and live as ‘one who is beloved’. After a painful session of art-making, you might look down to a page of scribbles, perhaps experience some release in the making, but then see a hot mess on the page. A grounding truth is that you are loved, still and always. You are chosen, still and always. And God is still and always will be your refuge. It helps to know we can hold truths at the same time:
I am a mess AND I am a masterpiece. This feels heavy and painful AND I’m not carrying it alone. This is hard AND I have great hope.
CLICK HERE for a FREE PRINTABLE with The GRACE Pages acronym spelled out.
The GRACE Pages - a Beginning
I was making GRACE pages long before they had a name. Back in 2018, when a lot of our family’s suffering began, I found myself struggling to know how to handle everything that I was feeling. I’d talk to friends and they’d say something like, “Just pray more,” or “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” I knew they meant well but those words are not helpful in the moment. Not at all.
Outside of pouring my heart out on my knees daily, I tried talk therapy, trauma therapy, Christian counseling, journaling, long walk in nature, reading all the relevant Christian themed books, …you name it.
Then, one day I sat in the tiny chair at my kids’ art table and pulled out some of their watercolors. I proceeded to add color to my pools of water and found myself mesmerized by the pigments swirling together. I added chalk and smudged it with my fingertips. I gripped the colored pencil with my fist and scribbled circles, round and round. I found words to cut out and paste. And hours would go by. In the end, whatever it was I made was not very pretty. But I surely felt much better after one of those sessions. At first, God wasn’t quite invited into those sessions. Well, at least as far as what I subconsciously knew. But later I’d see how He was there all along, and how He took those early sessions and turned them into something much greater. From a kid’s art studio teaching ‘process art’ to a women’s ministry where we’d process pain through expressive, intuitive arts. And now, to this. To today, where I’m certified in Therapeutic Arts and combining my faith to create a new experience for my clients and for you.
The GRACE Pages - a Process
Here, I’ve shared a process video that walks you through an entire 2-page spread. This intuitive, mixed media collage is one of my favorite ways to approach The GRACE Pages when I’m feeling big feels.
Video coming soon.