Messy Monday: It's a Paint Thing

Messy with a touch of emotional upheaval.

 

The first two days of last week were devoted to painting three rooms on the main level.

 

I didn't touch a brush.

 

So why was I so exhausted?

 

Because it is stressy mess.

 

Because it is rearranging, and reigning in, and... I don't know. It is just hard.

 

Death to my schedule. Death to my organized chaos. Death to my decor. Death to my comfort.

 

Little deaths to the little things that I am determined to cling to in an attempt to define my life.

 

 

"The more we get what we now call 'ourselves' out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become." - C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity 

 

Then there are all those opinions, and you know that when everyone tells you how much they like it then you have a good group of friends that knows that, in this case, it is probably best just to lie because, for Pete's sake, she painted the bathroom orange and she might be a little bit uncertain seeing it in the light of day and could even perhaps be on the brink...

 

Death to my self-confidence.

 

 

But it's done now. This level is anyway.  The comfortable colors warm the place up and my house is now a home, not an extension of a church building.

 

So the mess was worth it. The rearranging, and the taping, and the paint can lids and the blankets and the miniature nails and screws, and the pictures. Everything is where it should be. Even me. Home.

 

The deaths were temporary. Neccessary pieces of the process that makes this shell into a home.

 

I look at other choices. Other cans of color that God rolls onto the walls of other lives and I think Hmmm... that might be nice. Or Wow. That is just beautiful.

 

Or Never, Lord. Please don't ever EVER put that on me.

 

 

There is always upheaval when the Lord sets to making us home-y.

 

My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God,

and they shall be my people. -Ezekiel 37:27

 

The rearranging. The reigning in. The inconveniences. The uncertainty in the light of day.

 

The opinions.

 

The deaths.

 

It is just hard.

 

Death always is.

 

Yet it seems the most beautiful walls, the richest hues that ring true in any light, are achieved in those lives that have been the hardest. When the Painter's tape is stripped from the wall and the coloring is complete and things are put in place little by little, you see that the Never, Lord color is precisely what you were intended to wear.

 

You find that for some reason it suits you because it suited Him too. And when people look at you they just know it:

 

The Lord lives here.

 

¹⁴ For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, ¹⁵ from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, ¹⁶ that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, ¹⁷ so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, ¹⁸ may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, ¹⁹ and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Ephesians 3:14-19