The Joy of Rambling

Sometimes we have to step away from the nitty gritty details of our imperfect lives to see the lovely picture God is painting. From His perspective we are complete, whole, and beautiful.

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I painted a flower last night.

I had, on several occasions, started and stopped working on it. Most often my thought was this is too hard. I struggled with the texture which reminded me of sandpaper. I was aiming for that soft, velvety quality, but couldn’t capture it. So, I would put it away and pull out my markers to draw something simple, like this cup of coffee, which gave me immediate gratification. 

I paint or draw to get through the long evenings of repetitive questions as I sit with Jim. Half the time his eyes are closed so he doesn’t care what I’m doing as long as I’m listening and responding. Art has become my sanity’s salvation. At the end of the night I have usually produced something satisfying, and we go to bed.

But this flower…it brought me no joy. It is a magnified view of an open yellow rose (I think), that I captured with my phone camera some time ago. I always thought it would be fun to attempt a watercolor of it. But trying to utilize the various shades of yellow to create depth and dimension proved daunting and beyond my skill level. I put it away again and again, discouraged by its gangly adolescent appearance.

Last night I took another stab at it. It had been taped to a board, leaning up against my living room chair for a few weeks. From a distance as I walked into the room, I could see it there, and the vague outlines of what appeared to be a flower struck me. Maybe it wasn’t beyond salvagable. I got inspired and pulled out my paints. 

Through the droning on of endless questions I fussed and worked, trying to soften and perfect this assemblage of petals, but all I could see was obvious strokes and puzzle-like blobs of yellow. 

At the end of the night, I decided I was done. It was as close as it would get to resembling a flower and I just wanted to move on. I placed it up on the mantle to dry and got Jim ready for bed.

This morning, having forgotten all about it, I sat down on the couch with my coffee. Looking up, I noticed this beautiful rendering of the inside of a yellow rose just past its bloom, sitting on the fireplace mantle. Did I paint that? 

Sometimes we have to step away from the nitty gritty details of our imperfect lives to see the lovely picture God is painting. Sometimes the things we most dislike, sitting and listening to someone who just needs to be heard, force us into the very space where God can truly speak to our hearts. Sometimes it takes what feels like an eternity to see the beauty He has been creating all along. Hopefully next time, I won’t give up so soon.

But let patience have her perfect work, that you may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing. James 1:4