This piece I have written is not about my work or about my views on fashion styling, yet it is everything about my work and my views in fashion styling. It is me, raw and vulnerable sharing an intimate piece of my life journey with you. I have wondered for a few days if it is the right thing to do to share this, but I believe that what I am writing needs to be read by someone, who might be changed, encouraged, spurred on, or question their way of living because of reading it. Of course, this is my life’s story, and yours will be different, but my challenge to you is that you think deeply about why you do what you do each day, how you react to times of reflection or times of discouragement. Are you satisfied where you are, or like me, do you want to change the rest of your life to have more depth and meaning? You may be completely happy with the way you are and that is fantastic, I am truly happy for you, but I am not there yet, I’m still working it out, and this is where I’m at right now.
I am a bible believing follower of Creator God, a Christian. I recently began to ask God to show me His greatness, to reveal to me more of who He is.
Last Monday I escaped to the beach. I had been trying to get there for about 3 weeks, but other priorities kept getting in the way. The beach is close to an hour from where I live, and it can feel quite self-indulgent to just pack myself up and leave my home on a week day and use all that petrol to get there, but it is the place that I need to go to de-stress and to refill my emotional and spiritual cup.
It was a sunny and sometimes cloudy day with an icy wind blowing in off the water. Here in Australia, it is the beginning of spring and still quite cold. The waves were messy and choppy and there were but a few brave surfers out there trying to catch a break in the freezing ocean. I always take my swimmers when I go to the beach, I will swim all year round, but last Monday it was just not safe to do so.
I decided to go for a walk out along the break wall at the end of the beach, then walk back down along the beach to my car. As I walked along the break wall path, I began to get a sense of how intricately intertwined God is with His creation. He was reminding me through my thoughts and feelings about how He is in the water, the air, the vegetation, the sky, and everything in between. He knows how many fish are in the sea and where each one of them is and how many scales they have and which ones are carrying eggs, and how many of those eggs will survive to become fish and which ones are sick, and which ones will get caught by a fisherman, and why the little spiky puffer fish were lying dead on the sand, and so much more that I cannot even begin to comprehend. And that was just the fish!
He was giving me a glimpse of how intricately He, the Creator of everything is involved in His creation. That includes humanity. He knows each one of us completely, the difference between us and the rest of nature is that we get to choose whether or not we want to engage with Him.
On my way back, I climbed down from the break wall to the sand where beach and wall met. Beach walking is my favourite. Shoes off I happily walk along the water’s edge, usually splashing into the waves as they crawl along the sand and scanning the shoreline for shells and other treasures. This day I wore long pants, and I found myself running away from the water so that they didn’t end up wet. Normally I wouldn’t mind wet pants legs, but it was just too cold for that. As I walked, I talked with God in thought and prayer, and he began to remind me of how often fear can cause me to run away from the edges of my faith, from His gentle promptings to join Him and how much of life I could be missing out on. Instead, what I need to do is to let God wash over me, and I need to plunge into His water and swim and dive down deep and let it cover all of me. Not only getting my pants legs wet but every part of my body. THIS IS WHAT I WANT! I want the great depths; I don’t want to waste any more of what’s left of this life fluffing around on the surface, the edge, the shore, afraid, before I move on to eternity.
I am praying, asking God to show me how to go deeper. Deeper in my relationship with Him, deeper in my work and deeper in everything really. I decide to take some small steps that I think will help, especially in the area of my work.
On Tuesday, I had a session with my business consultant. She is so lovely and would never say a mean thing to me, she is always helpful and wants me to succeed, yet I left our meeting feeling deflated, sad, depressed, and questioning all that I am doing. Do I keep trying to promote the ideas and designs that I love, that represent me, or do I follow trend and make clothes like everyone else is making that are perhaps more commercially viable? I really don’t know the answer to this question at this point, so I think I am going to do a bit of both and see what happens. It just feels to me that I am adding to the noise if I make the same styles as you can purchase from a department store, and my bent is to offer an alternative option.
I am still learning the ins and outs of having a business in 2022, but it is interesting to see how much I rely on my tiny business venture for my self worth. I want to succeed, I want to be open to advise, change and help and often I feel like I am just too dumb to make it all happen. I am tired of feeling like I am wasting time and money, tired of all the distractions and tired of my sad little self being so internal, so unsure.
SOMETIMES I WANT TO SCREAM OUT BUT I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO SAY!!!
I am not my puny little business, I am not a failure I am not a bad wife and mother and friend.
I am a child of the Creator God who knows me and is in me like he is in the water and the earth and the sky. He is intimately aware and involved in all of His creation including me.
Can I go deeper with Him….? That’s the depth that truly matters!
How do I go deeper with the Creator God???
I stop. I breath in and out remembering that He gave me lungs that are capable of sucking in the air that He provided. Feeling the life giving oxygen moving through my body, into my blood stream and out to my very fingertips.
I listen with the ears that He formed on my body, and I comprehend with the sound mind that He placed inside me. I hear Him in the bird song and the rustling leaves and the chatter of children and the constant traffic noise and the everyday sounds of life as it happens all around me.
I read from the book of His words, written by men inspired by His Holy Spirit, and I ask for clarity. I ask Him to help me to learn more of Him as I study this book that I will never finish reading and learning from all the days of my life.
I speak to Him, praising Him because He alone is God and worthy of praise, and I ask Him to take me to a deeper place of understanding Him. It’s all that really matters. Knowing Him. Everything else will find its way when I am on the path to having a deeper, richer understanding and relationship with the one who “created my inmost being and knit me together in my mothers’ womb.” Psalm 139:13
I seek inside myself to know the Holy Spirits voice speaking to my spirit in guidance and love. It is usually a small and gentle prompting, reminding me of what I have learned by reading His word and seeing how His son Jesus walked out life on earth 2000 years ago.
I move forward into the day in anticipation of where He might take me. I have jobs to do and family commitments just like everyone, but I want to live open and ready to move into the unexpected. A conversation, a situation, an inner prompting to reach out to someone. As it is said so often it’s in the small things that life changes. If I do a few small things each day they soon add up to a lifetime of action. Action that is guided by the Holy Spirit who dwells in me, who I am learning to listen to more each day.
And Love, this is the key to opening the depths. Loving the Creator who loves His creation beyond our comprehension, despite our hatred, disobedience, and denial of Him. Loving Him enough to turn back to him that I might find TRUTH! True reality, true life and all that truly matters. True love and true inner peace and worth. As I write this, I can feel it inside of me, the revelation of His truth and I am reminded of the ancient one Solomon, who came to the conclusion within his own life after a lifetime of knowing great wisdom, great deeds and great pleasures that Meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless! “Let us hear the conclusion of the matter: Fear God and keep His commandments, for this is man’s all. For God will bring every work into judgement, including every secret thing, whether good or evil.” Ecclesiastes 12:13-14
So I will plod on with my business, my family, my days and my life trusting that as I seek to, I will live out the life that the creator planned for me to have before the beginning of time, knowing that sometimes I will walk off His path and seek my self-guided life and its lack of fulfillment. At other times I will experience the incredible blessing of really knowing that I am living my true life as He planned it to be. To truly love and serve Creator God and His creation.
Does this help me to find my way forward in life and in business? I think that it does. As I still questioned whether to post this writing this morning, I ‘heard’ several yeses through my morning bible reading, and through listening to a podcast. I am open and seeking the truth for my life’s path and I am trusting that the great God and Creator of the universe can direct me in any way He chooses.
“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all you do acknowledge Him and He will direct your path.” Proverbs 3:5-6
There is a song by one of my all time favourite bands called Switchfoot and a line in it says, "This is your life, are you who you want to be?" And another of their songs says, "Life is short, I want to live it well, one life one story to tell." My encouragement to you my friend is that you don’t settle for a life that is just okay, because it flies by so very quickly! Go deeper into the things that matter to you most, with courage and confidence and do what you must with conviction and gumption to live the life that The Creator planned for you.
SuzziMaggs Summer Collection is coming. I’m still working out exactly what it looks like, but it will be available soon. Hopefully there will be a piece there that is just right for you.
Thank you for reading my story, please email or message me if you want to talk more on these ideas,
Love Suzanne