Embracing a New Season: From Workaholic to Resting in Grace

Let me start by admitting, wholeheartedly, that if it were up to me, I would never take a break from anything. Never. I am, without a doubt, a workaholic—driven by an inability to sit still and do nothing. I always want to do everything.

What does this mean? It means I want to be a full-time grandma, full-time artist, full-time wife, full-time small business owner, and full-time author. All at once. Can you see the obsessive wishful thinking here? It’s like I’ve convinced myself that if I don’t fill every minute with something productive, I’m wasting time.

But then life—and perhaps God—stepped in and made a decision for me.

Since moving into our new home and beginning renovations, I’ve had no space to create art. Literally. The area where my art studio will eventually be is currently filled with furniture, as we’re working on the bathrooms, floors, kitchen—everything!

For now, we’re living in the guest bedroom with our parents, taking care of our grandkids in their sunroom. All of my paints, brushes, canvas, and even my piano are tucked away, out of reach. At first, I felt completely unsettled. A few weeks of rest were manageable, but soon enough, I felt that familiar rush—the urge to create, to work, to be busy. Guilt set in, telling me, "You should be doing more. You’re falling behind."

So, naturally, I thought, "Maybe I’ll write another book!" After all, I had to do *something*, right? But that’s when I realized the need to be busy was actually hurting me. The constant drive to do more was not only stealing my peace, but it was also keeping me from seeing the blessings right in front of me.

In those restless moments, I stopped to reflect and saw the bigger picture: the blessings God has given me in Christ. My family—my husband, our grandkids, our new home—and most importantly, my saving faith. In the midst of all my striving, I had lost sight of the fact that these are the things that truly matter. My worth isn't in how much I accomplish, but in who I am in Christ and the gifts He has already given me.

There’s a lesson I’m learning in this season: *There is a time for everything*. Sometimes, resting from doing something is actually the best way to improve at it. By stepping back, I’m gaining perspective. I’m learning to grow in wisdom, to be more patient, and to trust that God’s timing is perfect. It’s a humbling realization, but an important one. There are moments when slowing down, or even stopping altogether, is the most faithful and fruitful thing we can do.

I’ve always been one to push myself to the limit—moving from task to task, always striving for more. And here’s the funny part: I married the most balanced, sensible man in the world. My husband works hard, but he also rests hard. He knows how to call it a day, enjoy his evening, and go to bed with peace of mind. Meanwhile, I’m the one lying there, thinking of everything I didn’t get done! In this season, God is teaching me to learn from his example, to embrace rest and contentment, and to live in the moment rather than constantly rushing to the next thing.

This isn’t just about taking care of my health; it’s about refining my character. It’s about learning to live with a heart that seeks wisdom in Christ, trusting that He is at work even when I am still. For years, I’ve thought that accomplishing more would bring me fulfillment, but now I see that true satisfaction comes from resting in God’s grace and trusting His timing.

So, I’m embracing this time as an opportunity to shift my focus. I’m letting go of the pressure to constantly *do* and instead allowing myself to simply *be*. That doesn’t mean everything stops—our grandkids still need love and attention, the renovations continue, and life goes on—but it means I’m no longer fighting against this moment. I’m choosing to enjoy the blessings God has given me and trust that He is using these circumstances to work on me, too.

I’m excited about what’s ahead—our new home, our growing family, and the memories we’ll create. But more than that, I’m excited to see what God is doing in me through this season. He’s shaping me in ways that will glorify Him, and I’m thankful for the opportunity to be changed.

Here’s to a season of rest, growth, and deepening faith—one that will bear fruit in ways I can’t even imagine yet. All to His glory.

“Through the Colorful Haze: Navigating Life of Faith through Partial Vision Loss"

I just had my third eye surgery to slow down the loss of vision in my left eye, and I realized that my prognosis is not great.

It finally sunk in.

This surgery preserves my central vision in the left eye, but only for a time. Is there anything that I can do to stop the degenerative process that is affecting the cells in both of my eyes? My vision is already quite limited, to the point where I am constantly aware of how much I cannot see. I have blind spots in the center of my right eye, and the central vision of my left eye is how I can read and write. And it is not the kind of vision problem that can be fixed with glasses, but I still wear them because, like a bad pair of robbers, my degenerative retinal disease has a very good friend, astigmatism, and at least that can be corrected!

There are ways to slow down and maybe even treat the condition to some extent, but I can't go against my convictions. It would require being okay with doctors replicating and altering embryonic stem cells, which some say are from a batch of a miscarried baby, but considering what happens in medicine now, it is more likely a freshly aborted fetus.

I also read about the possibility of a chip that could be inserted into my eye and connected to my brain. Is this something that Elon Musk invented? I wonder... but even so, I wouldn't have it done. Somehow, the idea of having a foreign object responsible for how I process visual information terrifies me more than losing my sight. We live in a time when we need to carefully investigate and test things against the truth (the Word of our God), and I am sure that the chip wouldn't come with this algorithm!

Jokes aside, thinking that my vision can stay the same if I am lucky or maybe in 10-15 years my vision will turn into complete tunnel vision, or maybe even worse, is sobering and inspiring at the same time. Why? Because it makes one thing very clear. I am not in control.

There is a conflict in my heart now between grief over my world getting smaller and gratefulness for how God has provided me with creative ways to keep it expanded.

I may not be able to see distant details on the horizon out there, and my friends' faces are becoming more and more blurry, but the world on canvas is about more than what I can or cannot see.

Back in 2018, when I decided to embrace art as my calling, I spent time thinking about the name for my art brand. During a prayerful run, it came to me. It was going to be WholeHeartedArts. Even then, I knew that my art wasn't just about how I see the world, but about being wholehearted. And being wholehearted isn't about expressing my heart, but rather staying true to the One who gave me a heart. My God.

I didn't know then, but God did, that my eyes are degenerating and within just 2 years, I would need eye surgeries and experience a partial loss of sight.

I always knew my eyes weren't the best, but I didn't know how progressive the condition I had was. I never expected to not to have three eye surgeries in my early 40s.

My world is blurry, and I will never be able to just get in the car and go, but my heart is growing because I live less by what I see and more by faith.

God has been showing me in so many ways how He is always in control and has a plan for things I didn't see in my future. He started those plans way back, and He continues until I am standing with Jesus in glory with a brand new body and perfect eyesight.

God made my eyes! He made my heart. He made everything about me. And I am grateful. So although there is still a conflict in my heart between grief and gratefulness, the latter is winning!

I am also reminded of the fragment of psalm that started my faith journey with God: “The law of the LORD is perfect,fn reviving the soul; the testimony of the LORD is sure, making wise the simple;8 the precepts of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes;9 the fear of the LORD is clean, enduring forever; the rulesfn of the LORD are true, and righteous altogether.” Psalm 19:7-9 When I read those words first in 2008, I asked God to be my God and Jesus to be my Savior. I needed it to be truth then, and now I know it is always true. God’s Word is always True! He will be my eyes.

The art created in 2024 is all about gratefulness and trusting God. I hope it will inspire you to seek God and His ways because, no matter what we plan for ourselves, we can never be fully prepared for what we don't know. But He knows!

God bless you!

Stay faithful and grow in gratefulness.

Agata May'kowska

Coming out as #PROLIFE … Is this how I do my mid-life crisis?

Have I absolutely lost my mind? Does this decision sabotage my art career for the second time this year? It all depends how one looks at it! 

If I went into my closet today and came out wearing black eyeliner, a pink polka-dotted dress, a crazy hat with a feather, and an old leather jacket, I would actually get FEWER crazy looks from people about my clothes than the looks I get from those same people when I say I am pro-life.  I still remember the first time I received the “look” when a client found out I was pro-life. While she couldn’t believe my ignorance, I couldn’t believe the look of surprise on her face and the rolling of her eyes. After all, I am a Christian, Jesus saved me, and I had been very open and honest about my faith. So why the surprise? I realized it was because she really liked me and also loved my art. She considered me to be an open-minded, understanding, empathic person, therefore,  I had to be pro-choice because all the nice people are. Then consider my art. How can an artist be pro-life and demonstrate a solid, Biblically foundational viewpoint instead of going with  the flow of every current sensation, popular trend, and upcoming cause needing virtue signaling?

So, I get lots of looks!

For a while I didn’t bother even talking about it. To be pro-life was a no-brainer to me. In the past, I had some private conversations, but did not see a need to be open about it in my art and business. Perhaps I am late to this movement; I just never thought that I needed to be so clear about being pro-life. I never realized that my voice really mattered. Who cares what I think? Who cares what I support? Do we really need to all take a stand? Can’t we just keep those private beliefs, private? And especially when such a topic becomes so polarizing and political? That is something I could never quite understand. Family is sacred, and the value and protection of life should be safe from politics, not taken advantage of by it.

Then why did I decide to start using my art and my book to support Options United? This is what may be viewed as a middle age crisis; I will call it maturing as a Christ follower and getting to the point where I want everything I do  to be used for His glory and to promote His purposes.

It is obvious that God is definitely pleased when we protect His children especially when so many are aborted. During the lockdown of 2020, when so many statistics concerning various health and well-being issues were coming to the forefront, the most alarming was the increasing number of abortions! I was shocked to see it. According to various sources, the number of  abortions in the US in 2020 was approximately 930,000, with a rate of 14.4 per 1,000 women. The Guttmacher Institute estimated that approximately 21% of all pregnancies in the US ended in induced abortion in 2020, and according to the CDC, “a total of 620,327 abortions for 2020 were reported to CDC from 49 reporting areas.” https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/ss/ss7110a1.htm  Notice this additional article stating many people died from Covid in the US in 2020. As of 3:30 p.m. E.T. on 12/14/2020, the total death count was 300,267.  https://time.com/5919867/covid-19-300000-deaths/. The increase of 961 abortions didn’t make the Times. How do they fit in with the idea of abortions being safe and rare?  All those women risked dying from Covid  to have an abortion? 

Many years ago, when I was still in Poland, I learned the horrific consequences of the inactive and silent majority. We read many books about the Holocaust and wondered why it happened. Why did only a few people stand up, valuing life by  hiding Jewish families while others were satisfied to stand idly by?  Evil happens when people see it, yet choose to do nothing about it. I don’t need to stop all the evil in the world, but whatever evil I see on the path of my life, I want to risk the “looks” from others. 

Can you see now that my middle age crisis is not a crisis at all? I am finally having the guts to stand on the right side of history, not silently with private satisfaction and righteousness of my beliefs, but publicly and boldly before everyone.  So if it looks like the worst move for my art business, I trust God that He will turn my stand into His kind of movement and produce through me fruit that looks good to Him. After all, I can’t take my art career to heaven. Remember the gospel of Matthew and the story about tree and fruit. People will know I am a Christian by my fruit, regardless of  the “looks” I receive. What does my fruit look like? It is exhibited by valuing life, protecting those most at risk.  So be a good tree that brings forth good fruit.

God bless you!

The Strength of Three Strands | My Reflections on Christian Marriage

Let me start with a confession. I am on my second marriage. For many reasons, I don’t consider my first marriage as valid. It wasn’t a covenant of man and woman with God, but rather an empty covenant with tradition. The other party wasn’t even sober during our ceremony. I didn’t know that at the time. And what is even more important… I did not know God and Christ and had no idea what marriage was. What we did was not what God designed, and it fell apart quickly. I fought to save it, but human efforts weren’t enough to transform an artificial bond into a lasting covenant. And later, when I was saved by Christ, the other party already moved on and there was nothing to reconcile or redeem but rather to forgive and be at peace about it.
Obviously, there are many stances about marriage after divorce. I personally know people who looked down on me because I remarried, and I also know people who believe that God gave me new life and I could remarry as a new creation in Christ. I tend to stand in the middle of it. Not fully understanding some scripture, I am convinced that if my second marriage was a sin, it was unknowing, and I asked God to forgive me. But more than anything, I am grateful because the circumstances of my second marriage and the fruit of it let me see my husband as a gift. Not only a gift of companionship but a gift of sanctification. Already in so many ways just during the couple of years we were together, my husband helped me to be more like Christ. We experienced what it means to rejoice together and carry the burden together. I know we only have a couple of years, but I dare to have confidence about our marriage because it is not built on hope or the amount of time we spend with each other. It is not stronger because of our efforts to be together but by our efforts to abide in Christ.When we met, we connected about our dreams and goals, we shared and did our best to be honest. We hoped this would turn into a meaningful friendship and we rejoiced when it happened… Yet, we knew that it wasn’t enough to build our marriage on who we were, and what we wanted or even all that we had in common. We both knew from the beginning that even if we loved each other perfectly we live in such an imperfect and decaying world, that there is no amount of human love that could sustain our marriage.  But Christ could and will.

Why do I say that? During the 16 years of not being married, I witnessed wonderful marriages falling apart because people grew apart or fell out of love, or discovered they never really knew each other although they met in high school. Sometimes it was the mundane every day that killed the sparkle, and other times it was a crisis or unexpected challenge that broke the marriage down. And there is also that magical phrase of irreconcilable differences, a phrase that apparently should make everything better and simplify the heartbreak of a broken family. And since my first fake or not fake marriage ended in so much hurt, I was personally determined to never go through it again. But even that determination wouldn’t be enough to have our marriage grow and be as healthy as it is now. We knew, and we are so grateful that we knew it together, that our marriage needs to fully depend on Christ and His love for us and our love for Him. Otherwise, we will fail. You may wonder, why did we start our marriage talking about failure. Did you check the statistics? Almost 50% of all marriages in the USA will end in divorce or separation. Researchers estimate that 42% of all first marriages and 60% of second marriages end in divorce. Statistically speaking, our marriage had a higher probability of falling apart than surviving. But Christ… so we made it about Christ. And with Christ, we are a cord of three strands.

Christ and His Word are our foundation. The more we abide in His truth, the closer and stronger our marriage becomes. We pray and read the Bible together. We have a loving body of believers and godly counsel. We serve together at the church. We have also divided our responsibilities and roles based on our common understanding of God’s design, and we feel absolutely fulfilled by that. I love being my husband's helper and a homemaker. He loves being my protector and provider. There is so much we are learning about each other through this process, but most importantly – we are learning the love of Christ. The goal of our marriage isn’t to make each other happy but to be more like Jesus, and our happiness is the byproduct of it. We are at the beginning of this journey, as we only celebrated our first anniversary, and we don’t have any advice for anyone. What we have is prayer for all of us.Why? Because those statistics are not better for Christian marriages. The world gets only more broken and ungodly, and marriages are not only not supported or celebrated by our culture, but they are openly redefined, undermined and attacked.

How can we survive this? Instead of some advice, I want you to look at this painting below. Can you see those flowers in full bloom growing somewhere on a rocky hill, with a little bit of sunlight? One symbolizes a husband, the other symbolizes a wife, but the third one is the Word of God, and that is the reason it lasts. And this is my prayer for all our marriages… Our dear Father, I pray that you will turn husbands' and wives' hearts towards you first and help them become not a power of two but of three. Even if it is dark and the ground around us is rocky, we will grow, thrive, and bloom if we grow together in Christ. It is the strength of three strands that makes us withstand all the trials of time, difficulties, and disaster. "Two are better than one…" and "Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves. A cord of three strands is not quickly broken." - Ecc. 4:9,12. I pray that this is the truth about your marriage. Don’t try to do your marriage on your own, do it with Christ. Especially in this world, being attacked and tempted, let us keep our focus on Jesus. Blessed are all who read this!

Be the Light. When in Doubt, Be the Light...

When I doubt myself as an artist, I look back at how richly God has blessed me so far. Below is an incomplete collection of art that is no longer with me at home but in the homes of others. Many of those paintings were either purchased at a few of the art shows I had or privately ordered as gifts. I have also given many to my friends and family members. It is a blessing to have this gift from God and to give it forward. Art has become a way for me to pray for people as well. There is so much grace and God's favor in that process. I paint and I pray. The finished art is a beautiful reminder that you have been prayed for. I used to hide my art, only doing it once in a while and keeping it to myself. I am so glad that God put it on my heart to serve Him with my art. Read the scripture below:
"14 'You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. 16 In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.'"

— Matthew 5:14-16 (ESV)

The gospel is the ultimate light you can share with the world, but also - look at the gift God gave you as a way to be light too. Don’t hide it, use it to serve Gods purposes.

God bless you!