Celebrating Our Blessings and Tender Mercies!

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This weekend, we are traveling to an Irish Dance competition so I won't be posting until Monday, but we're grateful for all the blessings that have flowed after a hard and difficult couple of years. Our story has been unfolding as we learned my kiddo had dyslexia.

Last year, we came to the Key School at Carolina Day for tutoring not knowing that my daughter was dyslexic or even much about dyslexia. But we were embraced by all the teachers, staff, parents and students at Key. For my child, she embraced her dyslexia with grace and determination. But for me, I grieved.  

She can talk with poise and elegance far beyond her years, and she had dreams of becoming a doctor or president. But she couldn't read to find answers or often sentences lacked verbs or subjects. She struggled in math. I could see her dreams would slip away.  

I cried for all the times she begged not to go to school, when she railed about how hard math was. I cried when the tutor told me to have her tested for dyslexia. One morning as I dropped her off at Key for tutoring and sat in the car to wait, I started to cry. How could this bright kid who can brilliantly link the Arab Spring to lessons from The Hunger Games and support her arguments one by one, how can it be.  How can she write three grades below her level. But then I saw the garden at the Key School.

So I stepped into the garden. It's like the hymn I have loved since I was a kid. "I come to the garden alone, when the dew is still on the Roses."

And I knew these people were going to walk with us. And since we have come to the Key School, the blessings have flowed. I have learned to appreciate other ways of learning. I am learning how to empower this beautiful bright creature. This child's mind is a marvelous thing. 

And the blessings continue to flow. She is embracing her dyslexia pointing out how the gifts of it that will help to heal the world. She actually enjoyed reading a book for the first time since third grade and she wrote a paper worthy of having a college professor marvel that it was better than his students. She is thriving.

And for me, I have found my acres of diamonds. Photographing flowers has given me such great joy and has helped me recover from the grief and guilt I experienced feeling that I should have discovered it earlier.

And I have a new voice - creating art that inspires us to experience the joy and wonder of nature and our souls.

Between now and Mother's Day, my little mundo selection of works are available - all proceeds go to send my kiddo to camp, a Christian Girls Camp in the mountains of North Carolina, where my dad cooked forty years ago, and where I went as a kid. At this camp, the girls learn to bear the fruits of the spirit.


 Honey In the Cross

There's nothing I love as much as honeysuckle. I wait for its sweet smell. And Tender little flowers that bloom wildly  along our hedges. Once it starts growing it's hard to stop. It's like when we reach out to love one another. I remember once I suggested we plant honeysuckle. My father was aghast because honeysuckle is hard to control. But isn't that the point? Love is destined to grow and envelop all of us. It's hard to control. Sometimes that love comes from sorrow and from much love and courage.

Click to see it available as a 11x14" canvas gallery wrap
or a 6x8" decorative ceramic tile. 


 
Possibility 

At my daughter's school, a special school just for kids with dyslexia and language based learning differences, everyday the teachers are uncovering the beautiful minds and possibility of the kids to achieve all they can. They believe in the kids, in their abilities to excel and are armed with the knowledge of how to grow the potential of these kids, much like a gardener knows how to grow a beautiful flower. So much possibility abounds.


Click to see it available as a 10x10" canvas gallery wrap 
or a 6x6" ceramic decorative tile 



Dahlia Joy 




Last year, my daughter was diagnosed with dyslexia and she has embraced it full on. While she was being tutored in a wonderful school that helps kids with such challenges, I spent time in their garden restoring my soul.

This is one of the flowers from their garden. And I knew these teachers were going to walk with us. I am not completely over grieving this dyslexia. But I have learned to appreciate other ways of learning. My child's mind is a marvelous thing.

 Click here to see it available as 11x14" canvas gallery wrap
or a a 6x8" decorative ceramic tile


If there are any other selections you're interested in, please see my other work here
or send me a message


Enjoy!

Billie Ray Wells
http://cometothegardenart.blogspot.com/
http://billiewells.fineartstudioonline.com/
"Everyone has inside of him a piece of good news. The good news is that you don't know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!"     -  Anne Frank