argghhhh...and not in the piraty sense

I throw pottery.
I mean, I make it on a wheel...the process, it's called 'throwing'...just in case you started wondering if all of a sudden I became a weirdo and just threw clay objects to make them break...
I grew up cooking and baking with my mom, mum, aunts....my sister and I would mix water, flour and sugar and then put food coloring in it, just to be cool, and my mom (bless her soul) would let us do this day in and day out, ultimately leading to the complete and utter demise of her entire tupperware collection- who knew you had to clean it out before it hardened?!
I tell that lovely anecdote to correlate my pottery to baking and eventually to my life- stick with me!...when I first started out with clay, I treated it a lot like baking- except it was in two steps and way hotter than our oven at home could ever get. You make the piece you want, you put it in the kiln, take it out, let it cool and then you glaze it.
First, I never really could grasp the reality of the piece shrinking the first time in the kiln- I either made the pieces extremely large and they didn't shrink to the size I wanted- like my mom's 'cereal bowl' she uses to serve salad...for 20...or I made it the size I wanted and it would turn out to be perfect for a doll house- I just never could understand it. Second, when it comes to glazing...I thought if I left enough room at the bottom, the heat would 'melt' the glaze and it would run down to cover up the thumb prints or other smudges, but no, to my disappointment, it didn't run together, in fact it didn't even move. Pity.
I pictured my pieces to turn out so much more beautiful than what they ended up looking like. And it wasn't the kiln's fault or even the glaze or the clay...nope, the responsibility of the multiple travesties I produced rested squarely on my hands, as it were. Don't get me wrong, I'm not completely inept when it comes to clay and a wheel and glaze, but I had my fair share of pieces I hid so the rest of the class didn't laugh at me.
And that is like my life. Nice segue, eh? :]
It's like my life because when I look at it, I picture all these fabulous things: long life, gray hair and lots of wrinkles, true love, a whole load of kids, a strong and kickin marriage, a sex life- a good sex life, a house with a porch and animals, lots of noise, exhaustion at the end of a day, endless frustrations and debt. And I want it. I want it all- the bad, the good, the ugly, the pretty, the not-so-pretty, the painful and the painless...I want all that life has to hold. But then when I take an honest look at the current choices I make and how I conduct myself- the end result really isn't what I picture. It's like how I used to treat those early pieces- putting them in the kiln despite the marring, hoping that somehow the heat would work its magic, much like the oven does with chocolate chips in cookies- and the end product would be this beautiful, marketable and highly enviable piece that I created.
My current choices don't reflect the end result I want...I don't know why I continue to exist in this place of dreaming about the future but somehow refusing to take the steps to get there.
Eventually, I didn't get it perfect, but I got a lot better at determining the end size, shape, color and overall presence of the piece. And to be quite honest, I love some of my pottery- it's a life-size example of how God sees me. I know the sweat, tears and dreams I put into the pieces- they didn't just happen on accident, I actually worked to get them to look like that- and that realization makes me feel loved by Him.
I still have to wonder though- will I get it right? Not perfect...but will I get it right, where I start heading toward what I dream about? Will I ever take the steps? Or is it just about where I'm headed and not really so much where I am right now? Is today the day I wake up and decide only good things? Argh, the questions- they're endless....
Oh, and the baking...it got much better...I figured out using more than flour, water and sugar makes things A LOT tastier...just in case you were wondering. :]