Month: February 2019

Prayer

/ rainbowbutterflycreative07 / 1 Comment

Prayer

My Year With God

Go to the profile of Li Carter

Li Carter
Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

Prayer is one of those things that people either find easy, or they don’t. In my ten+ years as a Christian, I have always struggled with prayer. I see people praying, speaking so eloquently, and I just can’t find the words. I see people talking with God in a way that I wonder if I will ever be able to.

My words always seem so inadequate. I can’t get to grips with the flowery language used by some, and my simpler prayers seem to be just that; simple.

The thing though, is that God doesn’t want flowery language and words. He simply wants us; He wants me. He wants me to come to Him and talk to Him, as if we are friends. He wants to share every intimate part of my life, and when I get so caught up in the words of prayer, then that is when I struggle to actually get to grips with what God actually wants, which is all of me.

This week, I am going to try and remember that. I am going to try and keep my prayers simple and honest, and when it comes down to it, if I can’t actually find any words, then I will go back to what Jesus teaches in scripture, and I will use the prayer that He taught His disciples; the prayer that I said every day for the entirety of my primary school education.

And I will try to accept that this is sometimes all I can do, and that God says that it is good enough.

If you’d like to get updates from me once a week, you can click here… 🙂

Li Carter is a writer, artist and crafter. She lives in South Wales, UK, with her family, and five rescue dogs. She’s on Twitter @rbcreativeli , Facebook: Rainbow Butterfly Creative, and Instagram @rainbowbutterflycreative and is the author of My Only True Friend: The Beginning. She is currently working on a new series titled The QuickSilver Chronicles. She is the original Rainbow Butterfly, and wants to fill an ever darkening world with a little bit of beauty and creativity.

Advertisement

PTSD

/ rainbowbutterflycreative07 / Leave a comment

PTSD

A Haiku

Photo by Victor Rodvang on Unsplash

Flashbacks crashing in,
Panicked breathing and shaking,
How I wish for calm.

If you’d like to get updates from me once a week, you can click here… 🙂

Li Carter is a writer, artist and crafter. She lives in South Wales, UK, with her family, and five rescue dogs. She’s on Twitter @rbcreativeli , Facebook: Rainbow Butterfly Creative, and Instagram @rainbowbutterflycreative and is the author of My Only True Friend: The Beginning. She is currently working on a new series titled The QuickSilver Chronicles. She is the original Rainbow Butterfly, and wants to fill an ever darkening world with a little bit of beauty and creativity.

Spring Flowers

/ rainbowbutterflycreative07 / Leave a comment

Spring Flowers

A Haiku

Photo by Jordan Whitt on Unsplash

Tiny flowers grow,
Snowdrops, crocus, daffodils,
Peeping from below.

If you’d like to get updates from me once a week, you can click here… 🙂

Li Carter is a writer, artist and crafter. She lives in South Wales, UK, with her family, and five rescue dogs. She’s on Twitter @rbcreativeli , Facebook: Rainbow Butterfly Creative, and Instagram @rainbowbutterflycreative and is the author of My Only True Friend: The Beginning. She is currently working on a new series titled The QuickSilver Chronicles. She is the original Rainbow Butterfly, and wants to fill an ever darkening world with a little bit of beauty and creativity.

Valentines Day

/ rainbowbutterflycreative07 / Leave a comment

Valentines Day

A Promise To My First Love

Photo by Laura Ockel on Unsplash

If you’re looking for an overly soppy, lovey dovey type of post, then I suggest that you look elsewhere, because that’s not what this is.

I don’t like Valentines day. As a (quite happily) single person, I don’t have a significant other to buy me cards, and flowers and chocolates. I don’t mind. I actually don’t need them.

The thing is, Valentines has been built up into this massive hype, over something which, in the grand scheme of things, is not important at all. I feel it has become something of a reminder to couples to do something that they should be doing throughout the year anyway. We shouldn’t need a special day to love on those who are important to us.

And don’t get me started on school kids (particularly in primary schools) and how they have to take valentines in for the whole class — I may sound like grumpy cat, but, JUST… NO! Let kids be kids! There’s plenty of time for Valentines when they’re a little bit older!

But, I digress.

I don’t do Valentines normally, and I read a blog post about self care this Valentine’s day, and it suggested sending one to yourself, and while I have no intention of doing that, it did give me an idea.

Rather than sending a Valentine to myself, I am going to start a year long project. This will be my version of a Valentine, and I am sending it, not to a person, but to my first love…

WRITING

I want to really dig down into my writing this year. I plan to carry a notebook with me at all times, and to record everything I think of in it… quotes, thoughts, ideas… every single little thing.

I used to do this all the time, but as I got older, the worries about what people might think of me crept in, but the thing I’ve realised is that people will think what they’re going to think, and they’re going to do that whether I’m ‘acting normal’ or not. The fact of the matter is that I am a freak. I have known this from a very young age, and I am NOT ashamed of that fact, so for this next year, I will let my ‘freak’ flag fly, and I will have a notebook with me at all times, and you know what? If I think of something, or hear something interesting, I am going to record it in that notebook. I am going to hide my life within its pages, and I am not going to worry about people thinking that I’m strange, because in reality, they already do anyway.

If you’d like to get updates from me once a week, you can click here… 🙂

Li Carter is a writer, artist and crafter. She lives in South Wales, UK, with her family, and five rescue dogs. She’s on Twitter @rbcreativeli , Facebook: Rainbow Butterfly Creative, and Instagram @rainbowbutterflycreative and is the author of My Only True Friend: The Beginning. She is currently working on a new series titled The QuickSilver Chronicles. She is the original Rainbow Butterfly, and wants to fill an ever darkening world with a little bit of beauty and creativity.

OCD

/ rainbowbutterflycreative07 / Leave a comment

OCD

A Poem

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

Thoughts invading,
Fears preventing,
Worries and anxieties,
Torment the mind.

Repeated rituals,
“Must we do this again?”
The answer is “Yes!”
As I repeat and repeat.

And the end of the day comes,
Exhaustion overwhelms,
But I’m still not done yet…

If you’d like to get updates from me once a week, you can click here… 🙂

Li Carter is a writer, artist and crafter. She lives in South Wales, UK, with her family, and five rescue dogs. She’s on Twitter @rbcreativeli , Facebook: Rainbow Butterfly Creative, and Instagram @rainbowbutterflycreative and is the author of My Only True Friend: The Beginning. She is currently working on a new series titled The QuickSilver Chronicles. She is the original Rainbow Butterfly, and wants to fill an ever darkening world with a little bit of beauty and creativity.

Plotting

/ rainbowbutterflycreative07 / 1 Comment

Plotting

Adventures In Noveling

Photo by Green Chameleon on Unsplash

While I am already working on my current novel, an idea for another series came to me. It has been calling me away from writing my current work, but as an abstract idea, this is not very helpful.

I want to focus on my The Girl In The Mirror (Current novel), but as the story gets into the middle of act two, it is getting increasingly dark, and sometimes I am finding that there are days when I need a little ‘light relief’ when it comes to writing.

So, rather than force this idea into the box that it keeps popping out of, I have decided to plot it out, alongside working on my novel. I know it doesn’t technically count as writing, but in a way it does, because hopefully, when I finish my CN, I’ll be able to dive straight into this one, with a clear idea of what is supposed to happen in it.

I’m hoping that this will also prevent me from being worried about finishing a writing project, because of the “What next?” anxieties. I’m going to see how it goes, but for now, I’m enjoying it, and feeling very inspired.

The method of plotting that I am trialling is called the Snowflake method, which was designed by Randy Ingermanson. I’m going to review this method fully once I’ve completed my plan, so I won’t go into full details here, but if you want to check it out, all you need to do is google ‘snowflake method’ and you should find a number of articles about it.

If you’d like to get updates from me once a week, you can click here… 🙂

Li Carter is a writer, artist and crafter. She lives in South Wales, UK, with her family, and five rescue dogs. She’s on Twitter @rbcreativeli , Facebook: Rainbow Butterfly Creative, and Instagram @rainbowbutterflycreative and is the author of My Only True Friend: The Beginning. She is currently working on a new series titled The QuickSilver Chronicles. She is the original Rainbow Butterfly, and wants to fill an ever darkening world with a little bit of beauty and creativity.

Crochet Mood Blanket Update

/ rainbowbutterflycreative07 / Leave a comment

Crochet Mood Blanket

An Update

Well, January’s done. Am I the only one that thinks it kind of flew by? I can’t quite believe that we’re already a good week into the second month of the year.

I’ve had a bit of an up and down type of January, thanks to illness, and some other stuff, but I’ve also been quite creative, having done five illustrations, learned to knit (I’m not very good and need a LOT more practice), and started working on another novel just for fun.

I also kept up with this crochet challenge. I’ve managed to crochet one row for every day of January. I narrowed the colour palette down, but in reality, this was a mistake, which I intend to rectify this month.

It doesn’t look anything like a square, but you know what? I’m actually okay with that. I added in quite a lot of extra stitches, so it gets wider as the month goes on. I’m hoping that this month, I can avoid doing that.

The thing that this project has taught me already is to really think about the way the day has gone, because we can get so caught up in fleeting things, and sometimes they are no where near as bad as we think they are.

This project has helped me to keep these things in perspective. I’m hoping that the same can be said of this next month. And the good thing is that even if I am having a truly bad day, with this project I’ll be able to look back and say “Yeah, it wasn’t a good day, but I created a part of something.”

If you’d like to get updates from me once a week, you can click here… 🙂

Li Carter is a writer, artist and crafter. She lives in South Wales, UK, with her family, and five rescue dogs. She’s on Twitter @rbcreativeli , Facebook: Rainbow Butterfly Creative, and Instagram @rainbowbutterflycreative and is the author of My Only True Friend: The Beginning. She is currently working on a new series titled The QuickSilver Chronicles. She is the original Rainbow Butterfly, and wants to fill an ever darkening world with a little bit of beauty and creativity.

Rooted In Scripture

/ rainbowbutterflycreative07 / Leave a comment

Rooted In Scripture

My Year With God

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

This year so far, I am pleased to be able to say that I have read my Bible every day. I am sticking to the Bible In One Year plan that I began, and am really enjoying the approach of it.

I thought it would be a more linear approach, but actually, I am finding more insight in it, with it not being so.

I am currently part of the way through the book of Job, which, incidentally, was one of the first books of the Bible that I read after becoming a Christian (John was the first).

When I first read the book of Job, I couldn’t understand it. I didn’t understand why Job seemed to be complaining about his woes, and if I’m honest, I actually sided with his friends who were telling him that if he was going to be that miserable about things then he may as well just give up. I almost gave up and I was only reading it.

I am so glad that this book was one of the first ones that I read. It wasn’t until a good few months later, after a discussion with a very dear friend (and fellow bookworm; but that’s another story) that I realised the true importance of this part of scripture.

We all go through suffering. It is an absolute; an inevitable fact of life. Job’s life shows us this, but it also shows us what can happen if we cling to God throughout it. Job never once spoke out against God. He simply trusted Him to look upon him kindly, and to see him through in the end, which is what happens.

The thing is, when we go through hard times, our tendency can be to not turn to God; to not read His word, and in reality, that is the worst thing that we can possibly do.

I have read passages of scripture on and off before, but I have never delved into the Word like this before, and as I travel deeper into what God wants me, (wants us all) to hear, I can see how much I have missed out on, and how much I may now gain from being rooted in scripture.

If you’re struggling to get into the Word, I can highly recommend the Bible in one year plan by Nicky Gumbel. It has helped me more in a month, than other reading plans have helped me in my ten+ years as a Christian.

If you’d like to get updates from me once a week, you can click here… 🙂

Li Carter is a writer, artist and crafter. She lives in South Wales, UK, with her family, and five rescue dogs. She’s on Twitter @rbcreativeli , Facebook: Rainbow Butterfly Creative, and Instagram @rainbowbutterflycreative and is the author of My Only True Friend: The Beginning. She is currently working on a new series titled The QuickSilver Chronicles. She is the original Rainbow Butterfly, and wants to fill an ever darkening world with a little bit of beauty and creativity.

The Look In His Eyes

/ rainbowbutterflycreative07 / Leave a comment

The Look In His Eyes

A Haiku

Photo by oldskool photography on Unsplash

Ravenous; hungry,
A predator devours,
Innocence undone.

If you’d like to get updates from me once a week, you can click here… 🙂

Li Carter is a writer, artist and crafter. She lives in South Wales, UK, with her family, and five rescue dogs. She’s on Twitter @rbcreativeli , Facebook: Rainbow Butterfly Creative, and Instagram @rainbowbutterflycreative and is the author of My Only True Friend: The Beginning. She is currently working on a new series titled The QuickSilver Chronicles. She is the original Rainbow Butterfly, and wants to fill an ever darkening world with a little bit of beauty and creativity.

Winter

/ rainbowbutterflycreative07 / Leave a comment

Winter

A Haiku

Photo by Ian Keefe on Unsplash

Inclement weather,
Unpredictable forecasts,
Will it snow, or not?

If you’d like to get updates from me once a week, you can click here… 🙂

Li Carter is a writer, artist and crafter. She lives in South Wales, UK, with her family, and five rescue dogs. She’s on Twitter @rbcreativeli , Facebook: Rainbow Butterfly Creative, and Instagram @rainbowbutterflycreative and is the author of My Only True Friend: The Beginning. She is currently working on a new series titled The QuickSilver Chronicles. She is the original Rainbow Butterfly, and wants to fill an ever darkening world with a little bit of beauty and creativity.