CIC Creative Hub Sunset Paint Party in my Studio

How paint, prayer, and honest conversation became a sanctuary for every woman in the room

📍 Story Moment: A sunny Saturday morning in Auckland, 28 March 2026 — women gathering in a studio that holds more than paint, discovering they're holding more than brushes.

📖 "We are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." — Ephesians 2:10 (NKJV)

My studio is a sanctuary.

I don't use that word lightly. It's the space where I create, where I pray, where encounter groups gather, recording sessions happen and something quietly holy tends to unfold in the in-between moments. It's not grand. It's not perfect. It's mine — and I've learned that when you open a space like that to others, something shifts in the atmosphere in the most beautiful way.

Last Saturday, the CIC Creative Hub Paint Party filled it with women, laughter, colour, and something I didn't quite expect: the most honest conversation I've had around a table in a long time.

🕯️ We began, as we always do, with prayer. Not a long, formal prayer — just an opening of hands and hearts, an invitation for God to be in the room before the paint ever touched the canvas. It matters, that beginning. It sets the tone. It says: this isn't just a craft activity. This is something more.

💔 And almost immediately, something real surfaced.

As we settled in and the brushes came out, the conversation turned — the way it always seems to, in safe spaces — to fear. The fear of creating. The paralysis that sets in when a blank canvas sits in front of you and every voice you've ever heard whispers that you're not an artist, not creative, not talented enough to make something worth making.

What moved me was this: nearly every woman in the room had heard the same lies.

Not similar ones. The same ones. Almost word for word.

"I'm not creative." "I can't draw." "I was never the artistic one." "People like me don't make art."

🌱 There's something powerful — and something deeply tender — about the moment a room full of women realises they've all been carrying the same wound. The lie feels so personal when you're the one believing it. It feels like yours alone, like evidence of a unique inadequacy. Then you look around and see five other faces nodding slowly, and you understand: this was never about your ability. This was always about a lie that needed to be named.

Some of the women had painted with me before at a previous paint party. I watched them carry something different into the room this time — not perfect confidence, but a quiet knowing. A memory of having held a brush and survived it. A willingness to begin again that comes only from having begun before. There's a grace in returning to something you once dared to try, and it was written all over them.

📖 "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." — John 8:32 (NKJV)

We painted sunsets.

Each one different. Each one carrying the fingerprints of the woman who made it — the hesitations, the brave decisions, the moment she stopped worrying and let the colour do what colour does when it's given permission.

🙏 There's always that moment in a paint party when the room goes quiet. Not an uncomfortable quiet — a focused quiet, the kind that settles over people when they're fully present to something. Hands moving, eyes soft, the world outside held at a gentle distance. I love that moment. I think it's one of the places where healing happens without anyone noticing it's happening.

But the moment that has stayed with me most from this morning wasn't in the painting at all.

It was after.

🌿 When every canvas was finished, the brushes were cleaned and the paintings were propped up for everyone to admire, the women didn't leave. They pulled in around the table — chairs turning, voices dropping just slightly, the way they do when a conversation becomes real — and they began to talk.

Not about painting. About life. About the actual weight of what each of them was carrying right now. The challenges that had followed them through the studio door that morning, tucked quietly behind the smiles and the aprons.

And we held them together.

We encouraged. We prayed. We listened the way women listen when they've just spent a morning doing something vulnerable together and trust has been quietly built between brushstroke and conversation.

🕊️ That's what community does. That's what a sanctuary is for. Not to keep the difficult things out — but to create the conditions where difficult things can be brought into the light and shared, so they become lighter.

Painting together opens something. I've witnessed it enough times to know it isn't accidental. There's something about creating in the presence of others — about the shared vulnerability of making something, the unspoken solidarity of sitting side by side with a brush in hand — that dismantles walls. By the time the paintings are done, people are ready to talk. Ready to be real. Ready to say: here's what I'm actually carrying. Can you help me hold it?

✍️ Story in a Sentence: "We came to paint sunsets, discovered we'd all believed the same lies, and left having held each other's real lives around a table — in a studio that's exactly what it was built to be."

💡 Reflection:

"You don't have to have it all figured out to begin. Your story matters — even the parts that still hurt, even the chapters you'd rather skip. Take a moment with these questions and let the Holy Spirit lead you gently…"

1. What lies about creativity — or about yourself — have you been quietly carrying? Where do you think you first heard them? 🤔

2. Is there a creative gift you've set aside, believing it wasn't meant for you? What would it feel like to return to it, even tentatively? 🤔

3. When did you last experience the relief of discovering that someone else was carrying the same fear you thought was yours alone? What did that do to the fear? 🤔

4. What would it mean for you to have a sanctuary — a space, a community, a relationship — where you could bring your real challenges and know you'd be held? Do you have one? Do you need one? 🤔

5. Where in your life is God inviting you to create something — not because you're confident, but because you're willing? 🤔

   
   

🎺 Affirmation:

You are not the only one who has believed those lies. The voice that told you you weren't creative, wasn't talented, wasn't the artistic one — it wasn't telling the truth. It was telling fear. There's a difference.

You were made by a Creator who wove creativity into the very fabric of your being. It doesn't always look like painting. It looks like problem-solving and cooking and storytelling and the way you arrange flowers or raise children or find exactly the right words for someone who needs them. Creativity is woven into everything you are.

🪨 And community? 🤔 Community is the place where the lies lose their power. Where you look across a table and see your own fear reflected in someone else's eyes, and somehow that makes it smaller. Where someone says "me too" and the whole room breathes out. Where the painting on the wall becomes the least important thing about the morning.

You were made to create. You were made for community. You were made to be known — really known — and to know others. Today's paint party was a little glimpse of what that can look like.

🕊️ "And if this is your story too — even a fragment of it — know that you are not alone. God sees. God knows. God redeems."

🙌 Prayer:

"Lord, I lay this story — all of it — at Your feet. The beautiful parts and the broken ones. Take it, and let it be of use…"

Father, thank You for sanctuaries. Thank You for studios and round tables and conversations that begin with paint and end with truth. Thank You that You are not afraid of our real lives — that You welcome us in, whole and unpolished, exactly as we are.

Thank You for every woman who walked through that door today. For her courage to come, to try, to pick up a brush when everything in her said she couldn't. For the grace she extended to herself when the canvas didn't look the way she imagined — and for the moment she kept going anyway.

Thank You for the conversation at the end. For the holy, ordinary gift of women gathered around a table, trusting each other with their real lives. Lord, let what was shared today be held tenderly. Let the encouragement take root. Let no one leave and feel alone again with what they're carrying.

I pray for every person reading this who is quietly longing for that kind of community — for a sanctuary where they can be honest, be held, and be themselves without apology. Lead them there, Father. You know exactly what they need.

May every paint party, every encounter group, every prayer session that happens in this studio be an encounter with You — the God who gathers, restores, and never, ever wastes a brushstroke.

In Jesus' Name, Amen.

There's another group of women arriving at 4pm. The studio will fill again with colour and conversation and all that beautiful, messy, sacred creative work.

I can't wait.

If you've been wondering whether a paint party is the kind of thing for you — come as you are, with all your "I can't" tucked under your arm. There's a seat at the table, a brush with your name on it, and a room full of women who have believed exactly the same things you have.

You won't be alone in it. You never were.

🕯️ "This is my story. This is His glory. And it's still being written."

🌸 A Gentle Call to Action

If this reflection spoke to your heart, I invite you to take it deeper:

• Journal your thoughts and prayers as you process these truths.

• Explore my Devotional Collection for more writings that weave Scripture and creativity together.

• Visit my This is My Story page, where I share the deeper journey behind my art, writing, and ministry — a testimony of God’s restoring love in the broken places.

• Consider joining one of my Healing 💔heARTs💖 gatherings or paint parties, where we create, share, and heal together in God’s presence.

Your story matters. Your freedom matters. And most of all, you are deeply loved by the One who sets captives free.