The Clay Fights Back

Hiya my name is Chloe and I write a faith based blog journal series called ‘Confessions of a Cave Girl.’ This is a place where I journal my creative meditations and thoughts in the hopes that I can help another person with my reflections (p.s.. please excuse my grammar)

So who am I? I’m a creative Girly love love loves to write, mostly because if I don’t put my thoughts onto paper they just expand and grow into chaos. I love to paint and dance, write lyrics and poetry but probably the most fitting to this blog is that I am a potter. I love working with clay, shaping and creating something new and different each time I experiment. Basically I’m a grown adult that still plays in the mud without shame!

I learned how to use the pottery wheel in a homeless charity in the town center of Belfast on my birthday a few years back. It was a Lovely place and Amy, their potter was thee most friendliest and warmest person I’d ever met. She was a Christian as well, yet I had only just encountered God not long before I had met her. My heart was still very hurt and closed off, stand-offish towards people and I wasn’t a trusting person towards others. In that period of my life I was at the very start of my transformation only starting to heal… I felt that there was only room left to trust God.

I attended the pottery with my old youth justice worker at this charity and she chatted away eating the buns and drinking endless coffees. Amy took me over to the wheel and slammed a lopsided lump of clay into the centre of the turntable. She had created a warm and welcoming space for me to learn and started to teach me techniques for centering the clay on the wheel. Seriously though she made it seem so easy.

Hahaaa, My Go..

I slopped the lump of clay into the centre, spun the peddle at its max and the lump of clay flew halfway across the room. Girl hadn’t even touched the clay and it went flying. Laughing, Amy set the wheel up for me to try again. This time I was more careful with the clay, probably a little too patient and nurturing lol.

Fast forward to a few years later… to last week lol, I was working with recycled clay and I didn’t catch on until it was too late. So what this means is that the recycled clay has a lot of air trapped inside and If you don’t remove the air bubbles before throwing on the wheel or before centering on the wheel, the clay will wrestle you. Literally fight you.

so…

A thought came to me as I wrestled with this clay on the wheel. Just like this clay, I fight against God sometimes.

Chloe what has this got to do with God?

Well God refers to himself as the potter, the shaper, the molder in scriptures and he calls us the clay. Oh my goodness it makes so much sense to me why he used this analogy. So when I look at myself, and I emphasize on myself because it’s not my place to analyze another, I feel like God is constantly working on me to remove my “air bubbles.” It feels like it is a non – stop process and I’ve reached the conclusion: I fight back way too much. Although it was a wrestling match on the wheel to center that lump of Clay, it didn’t take as long to center the clay as it takes for me to allow God to work bad air bubbles out of me… to start molding my heart away from bitterness and my new life away from the chaos. This is what God does best. Stop fighting Chloe.

Isaiah 64:8 – Yet you, Lord, are our Father. We are the clay, you are the potter; we are all the work of your hand.

So after that lump of clay had completely deformed on me I made sure that I wedged the next piece of clay to remove the air, I lifted it up and down on the wheel to release unseen air pockets, yet still, it resisted me. The wheel started to shake and it jolted, side to side fighting against the process. Melt. Whilst rolling my big brown eyes and muttering I realized a new perspective, how the clay just needs a firm, steady hand to guide it back into the centre. I can see God in this statement as well. He knows exactly how to lead us, with a steady yet firm hand, even when we resist, even when we shake under the pressure of transformation.

Air bubbles, I wont list mine but they are those hidden pains, beliefs, and habits that rise up and distort how we grow. These might be our childhood wounds, trauma, mental health struggles, dysfunctional environments, fear, or distrust, all the things that birth limiting beliefs and keep us stagnant. While some struggles are of our own making, others come from places far outside of our control yet God still works through them for good.

Psalm 139:23–24 “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

I believe it is very important for us to try and analyse ourselves. I think self awareness is a tool that can open doors for God to reveal things to us about ourselves, (the good and the bad) and where we need the healing.

I’ll use a metaphor of a tree with branches as a different example. At the root of the tree there are the causes of our limiting beliefs and learned unhelpful behaviors and the branches are the symptoms that we show because of the roots. Say some of these branches are depression, anxiety, fear of rejection, addiction, symptoms we show because of what’s buried at the root of the tree. The roots may look like childhood neglect or domestic abuse in a harmful home environment. That’s a deep root for someone to explore and if you’re not ready yet, that’s okay. God doesn’t rush healing, he is very patient and caring towards you and everything will unfold at the right time. Don’t force it, wait for God as his timing is perfect.

However, in my reflection, these unhealthy roots will give birth to so many little air bubbles and if they aren’t removed they can cause many issues as time goes on. The roots can harden a beautiful soul and weaken a strong character, it can make a heart bitter towards others, build up high walls of discomfort and distrust, make an individual internalize everything, cause one to self isolate or lead one to be addicted to substances or consistently wear a mask so that no-one truly knows them.

It’s a hard pill to swallow and when we don’t analyse the roots to our own trees we may actually start doing that. I have a few friends that are doctors and when it came to this topic of mental illness they all said the same thing. Medications only treat the symptom for a short time and wear off they never cure the cause. (Side note : If you take medications I’m not telling you to stop, that is between you and your doctor. I am not a doctor I’m highlighting a statement that supports a need for self-awareness and therapy and an active change.) Whilst medications can provide relief from symptoms, they do work best when combined with deeper healing, faith, therapy, support or self-discovery. My friend’s statement has always stuck with me and I can apply it to this metaphor about the tree in situations throughout my own life.

I can tend to stagnate myself and prevent transformations by just chopping off the dodgy branches I don’t like that eventually grow back. For example: I was a smoker from ages 14 – 21. I know, yuck. I believed it helped me with the stress and anxiety but really, I just needed space to breathe. I was on and off the fegs constantly growing up with nicotine chewing gum – tasted horrible btw. I tried the E-Cigs – they were too foggy, didn’t hit right and I always ended up reaching for tobacco,. Nicotine patches – Nightmares, literally. My dreams used to be so intense with people trying to kill me that the last thing I needed was these patches making my nightmares more dramatic. The point is I tried to cut off that branch constantly but it just grew right back when I was overwhelmed or stressed or anxious. It became a comfort, a necessity, my self medicated cure for coping.

It is a hard process but I’ve learned that God the potter wants to transform and swap out the bad roots of the tree for a healthier source so that the branches can bare fruit and flowers. I fight back too much… my identity is in God not in these air bubbles. He helps his children to become more and more like him every day but to do that we must acknowledge where we are right now ‘the good and the bad’ and look at how we got there so God can help us to accept, grow and change into something healthier. It’s not easy, especially if the roots to your tree has caused damage to your heart, mind, soul and relationships throughout your life.

It’s so interesting for me to reflect on the start of my pottery journey until now. I had so many air bubbles and 100% there are still so many more there I know lol. At one point in my life I was definitely that lump of clay that ran off the wheel and skedaddled across the room to get away.

Do you fight back, too? I know I do, against the growth, against change, against the new, but I need to remember that any air pockets that are left within the clay; they might stay hidden at first, but eventually they will destroy the whole vessel. As a pot develops, as it is shaped and fired, cracks will show, and pieces will explode. I have to ask myself, Isn’t It far better to trust the process and allow myself to be shaped and molded into a better vessel than the one I was before?

I love that God chose this analogy of clay and pottery to describe His relationship with us. Why do we resist our Maker the one who is committed to drawing us closer to him every day? If you’re an artist, you know the frustration when your creation refuses to hear your expression. We lose patience with our art so easily at times and yet, God, the best artist of all chooses to patiently reshape and remake us every time we fight and mess it up for ourselves.

Jeremiah 18:1–4 – This is the word that came to Jeremiah from the Lord: “Go down to the potter’s house, and there I will give you my message.” So I went down to the potter’s house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him.

Jeremiah 18:4 says that the clay fell apart IN HIS HANDS! holding onto the clay even through the fighting. He was patient and loving towards the clay and instead of giving up on it he transformed it into a beautiful new vessel. He is not letting go of His children. What a blessing of his grace!

Any way I needed to share this as I thought It was such a cool thought.

Last Side Note: I just want to be clear as I’m aware that some of the content above might feel triggering for some readers. Everything I’ve shared is a reflection of my own journey, my thoughts, my healing, and my personal experiences. I’m not a doctor, and I’m not giving medical advice; I’m just connecting dots through creative journaling in the hope that it might encourage someone else.

God has played a huge role in supporting me, and he uses scripture, personal meditations and self-reflections in my life to reveal to me the deeper roots behind my “air bubbles,” This journal isn’t meant to prescribe it’s just an honest piece of my own walk with God, written out in hopes that it might meet someone else in theirs.

Signing off

Cave Girl