you only need one door

a little update about a new season, a new door

Come sit by the window today in the little blue room, and let the sunlight warm our faces, our fingers, our souls and I’ll tell you about a door.

In the midst of the grief and frustration and changes of this past year, in that dark soil of shadows, something grows, peering shyly up out of the soil. Something with roots. Something like a new door.

I’ve spent the last few years knocking on the doors of so many and varied jobs that I have lost the roles to the blur of cover letters and resumes and rejection emails (or an astonishing lack thereof). A season of knocking is inherently littered with discarded hopes and stinging nettles of disappointment.

That made this past year feel like living in shadows, hoping that the clouds might part, that I might be in a more settled season, that roots might grow deep enough to send up shoots, signs of hoped-for fruit. While there were many beautiful gifts in the past couple of years, I have not felt anything close to flourishing, and almost lost the belief that I might taste a bit of that flourishing or wholeness in this life. I nearly believed I would just always feel a heavy weight of anxiety and struggle. For those whose season weighs heavy, the hardest part might be believing life will ever feel different.

In the midst of my heavy season, someone said to me “you only need one door,” and I have found that comforting. I can only walk one road at a time, only go one way at once. And now God has opened a door and invited me to walk through. The door is beautiful, far more beautiful than I had dared to hope for, let alone dared to pray for.

I cannot untangle this new direction and my journey as an artist from life with my mother. I was born into the home of a woman who loved the Lord her God and tilled the time and space of her days in order to cultivate loving her neighbors and creating art. My sisters and I cannot recall a time when we were not encouraged to explore artistic mediums or share our work in one way or another. Our pursuit of creative ideas was given mum’s full support and whatever funds our tight budget could spare. Trying out pastels, oil and acrylic paints, block printing, charcoal, and so many other mediums—this was the norm of our world.

Creating art was, for us, an inherent part of living a life of service to the Lord and enjoying God’s goodness. My mother cultivated not only a sense of freedom to explore artistry, but an unquestioning confidence in our capacity to create beauty that mattered to God’s kingdom and the world we lived in.

Despite the immersion in visual art (my mum was a painter and textile artist), I was, early on, drawn to the artistry of words. From an early age I was immersed in beautiful, complex stories. My childhood was a good bit of imperfect but workable ground for my growth as an artist, tended by my earthly and heavenly gardeners. “She was a true gardener,” my sister

Tessa Smith

said of her once, “She helped us all to grow.”

I wrote last October that I would like a bit of earth, which I explained meant that “I would like a bit of kingdom come…I would like a bit of green pastures. I would like still waters. I don’t want just to receive, but to accept his invitation to take part in planting seeds and mothering up saplings. Not just in my own life, but in others’ lives.”

Writing those words was a prayer for me, as often my writing turns out to be. The ways that God has begun answering—the shoots and sprouts coming up from the seeds of that prayer—are beautiful and messy and mysterious.

The door that has opened is a ministry called United Adoration, whose work is to “empower artists, and the local church, to create art that is meaningful to the communities that matter most to them… their own.”

The work of artists is important. But all artists need encouragement and companionship to live “on mission”—which is to create the art they were made by God to create and share it in beautiful ways in the places God has put them. So I am going on staff as an artist missionary to serve Northeast Ohio, the hills and people I love dearly, so I, too can cultivate in artists an unquestioning confidence in their capacity to create beauty that matters to the kingdom of God.

I am carrying on my mother’s work, which she inherited from her parents and carried on the context of her home, in the classes she taught, at the art shows she planned, and in the books she wrote. The tears come unbidden as I sit and ache for her to be here, listening and cheerleading and challenging me. She would have loved this work.

Strange how all the joys are somehow more vivid with the shadow of grief under them.

For now, this is the door that God has invited me through, and I will enter. As I turn and look back, I get the gift of seeing how I have been in the Lord’s hands all along in my moments of faith and in my moments of doubt. I couldn’t always feel God’s presence, but he was with me.

I pray that whatever door you need 
opens at the right time. 

I pray that in the meantime, you will be comforted 
by God’s beauty, his good presence, his steadfast truth. 

I pray that you might unclench your fist, 
and lay it on the shoulder of another who is waiting.

I pray that you might know heartily 
in the deepest well of your soul 

that God our Maker loves you
that you can entrust your life, complications and all, to his care. 

Friends, I have so much more I could say, so I’ll be writing more about it in the future. But I can see it—I can see the orchard, the fruit of churches whose artists are thriving and connecting with our communities in meaningful, beautiful ways. I can see our patches of kingdom stitched together across aisles, communities, the world. And I am so honored and overwhelmed that I get to invest in artists, care for artists, and learn to grow as an artist myself.

I cannot do this work alone, which is actually appealing for me. I love solitary work, but I really, really love a good team. If you would like to talk more about what it looks like to join my team, I’d love to talk! You can email me at my shiny new email address: karly_smith@unitedadoration.com. You can also sign up for my monthly missions updates here. Lastly, if you are interested in joining my support team, you can give a one-time gift or become a monthly support partner here.

Just as a note—when I turned on the paywall for this space not too long ago, everything was up in the air and uncertainty weighed heavily on my heart. Trying to be a writer is confusing and messy and also beautiful. I am happily returning to all free content here, now that I am joining United Adoration, and will (eventually) have a more regular source of income. Thank you for those who have supported my work here, and I look forward to what the Lord makes of all this! If you want to continue to support my work, you can do so through my missions giving link. And if you ever want to “buy me coffee” (or tea) you can use the giving link to give a one-time donation.