Do Not Pass the Palette...Do Not Collect $200

I sit at my laptop gazing out the window...not sure how to write what the "committee in my head" has been mulling over the past few days...

I did something this week I rarely do...take PTO (paid time off) in winter...not just one, but TWO days...

Simply because I knew I needed it...the battery of this cordless screwdriver was running on mere fumes (do batteries have fumes?)...  Empty, joyless, trying to run with cement shoes on.  Barren...

And yet, something told me, "Don't waste these days..."  I guess you'll be hearing more about how valuable this time has been over a series of posts.  Who wants a long read, right?

First off, "My name is Denise F. and I'm an introvert..." (a parody of an AA meeting), so how do I recharge? 

Rather than list those ways...I'll have you see some of those ways in my posts over the next few days.

I went into my studio (our third bedroom that has desks and cupboards and supplies...but no bed) not really knowing where my time would take me.

We've been studying the book of Hebrews in church...parallel to that, another congregation is as well whose podcasts I download...Beth Tikkun Messianic Fellowship (which means "place of restoration").  I thought I would listen to the introduction to Hebrews from their pastor, L. Grant Luton.

He was using an analogy of an artist, an artist's palette, and a painting as a way to introduce what Hebrews is all about.  And my mind drifted back to a song/poem I had heard a long time ago as a teenager...called The Brush...the songwriter wrote it about his life:

 

Life started out like a canvas,
And God started painting on me,
But I took the paintbrush from Jesus,
And painted what I wished to see.

The colours I painted kept running,
And the objects were all out of size,
I had made a mess of my painting,
My way now seemed so unwise.

Then I gave my painting to Jesus,
All the colours, all the pieces so wrong.
In the markets of earth it was worthless,
But His blood made my painting belong.

He worked with no condemnation,
Never mentioned the mess I had made.
Then He dipped His brush in the rainbow,
And signed it, the price has been paid.

When I gave the brush back to Jesus,
When I gave the brush back to Him
He started all over life?s canvas to fill,
When I gave to Jesus the brush of my will.

 

Words and Music by Chuck Milhuff

 

And here is that songwriter and the song sung by Ben Speer of the Speer Family:

 



Now...I love today's praise and worship music, but the eloquency in these lyrics, along with its truth, moved me to tears.  And I'm finding that the richness of the words (and the truth they hold) in the older hymns that have survived centuries have a special way of nurturing me, as no modern songs can...like the one I featured in this post.  But I digress...

Have you ever seen a painter's palette?

It is messy, chaotic, seems to have no redeeming value, no meaning, not a place where paint wants to remain...

And yet, we are born into this world as fresh as brand new tubes of oil paint and we want to somehow go from the tube straight onto the canvas..to live a beautifully perfect painting of life.

But, as Pastor Luton illustrated...we cannot take a detour past the pallet...but our journey must go through the pallet.  God wants to squeeze us out and mix light with dark...and to us it looks like random chaos.

C. S. Lewis wrote in a letter dated December 20, 1943 (when England was in the middle of The Blitz, and they had no idea of the outcome):

The great thing, if one can, is to stop regarding all the unpleasant things as interruptions of one's own or real life. The truth is, of course, what one calls interruptions are precisely one's real life. The life God is sending is one day at a time. What one calls one's real life becomes a phantom of one's imagination. This is what I see in moments of insight, but it's hard to see it all the time.
 

I don't know totally what my phantom "real" life was dreamed to be (but some things I would have gladly left out), but the fact is...my real life is the palette.  I've seen the chaos, the sin, the randomness, the heartache, the dark colors, the bright ones, the failures, the struggle to find meaning of it all at times, and how, when I take the paintbrush, I make things an even bigger mess...and some of the chaos is a necessary sign of the Painter's love.

So, what a blessing when God steps in and corrects you!
Mind you, don’t despise the discipline of Almighty God!
True, he wounds, but he also dresses the wound;
the same hand that hurts you, heals you.
From one disaster after another he delivers you;
no matter what the calamity, the evil can’t touch you— Job 5:17-18 (The Message)

God rescues the afflicted by their affliction;
He instructs them by their torment.  Job 36:15-16 (HCSB) 

But often, if I step back, I can see the hand of the Painter...other times His hand is still hidden...

But I trust the Painter...and how He can turn the mess into a masterpiece...

And the meaning of the palette is it is the history, the story behind it all...what it took for the Painter to make me His masterpiece.

And the theme of Hebrews is to persevere on the palette...the Painter knows what He is doing.

Quality time spent so far...and it might just be me...

...but I'm starting to see a little green...

Fall Frolic Full of Remembering ~ Part 2

The weather is changing fast...summer has almost closed the door on 2012, except for its Indian sister...

Earlier I began this story about my Fall walk with my Edster this week...

 

Our walk took us over to Brandywine Falls, part of the Cuyahoga Valley National Park...a place with much meaning for both of us.

 

When Edster first came to Akron, he had just had his 14th surgery on his knee...and his 2nd knee replacement...grateful that his leg had been spared despite ongoing neuropathic pain.  With Brandywine Falls close by, we made his therapy goal to be able to go down and up the boardwalk stairs to and from Brandywine Falls.  As Bruno shows you here...that's a LOT of stairs.

 

High stairs...

 

But he did it...and so we had our engagement setting taken at Brandywine Falls.

 

We had not visited there for such a long time since those days...despite it being nearby.

The night before my wedding, I slept at The Inn at Brandywine Falls...a 19th century farmhouse at the top of falls.   We had reserved several rooms over two nights for out-of-town guests in the wedding party.

 

That morning, a phone call at 5:30 a.m. from my brother told me that my father had died.  That night, alone in the room at the Inn, I received a very meaningful phone call at 11:30 p.m., from my boss.

I had not walked the grounds of the Inn since then, and our walk brought many memories...joy mingled with sorrow.

 

Our first night together as man and wife, we spent at the Inn, but in The Granary...formerly a chicken coop...it was now a suite apart from the main house.  It was beautiful and enchanting.  And historic...right up my alley.  But I had calling hours and a funeral to go through, before we could move on to Maine for our honeymoon.

 

It was wonderful this week to take the time out to slow down and walk...

 

to remember...

 

my miracle marriage to my husband...

 

and how much I miss my dad...

 

and how such mixed emotions come from the same place...

 

the heart...

for you cannot open yourself to love without also opening yourself up to grief.

I am truly blessed.

 

Little Did We Know ~

As I walked out the door after work today, my first impulse was to look up at the sky.  The weather was pristine, September sun lower in the sky than this time two months' earlier, and refreshing air, distinctively void of any saturation of humidity.  I got in our Honda Odyssey, and I looked up at the sky once again...a comtrail behind a silver reflection of a commercial airliner was in view.  How innocent...how naive we were on this night 11 years ago.  Eleven years ago this sighting was commonplace.  Little did I know...

 

In the documentary made by Jules and Gideon Naudet, as well as NYFD firefighter, James Hanlon, covering the journey of a "probie" in the New York City Fire Department, they show the firefighters on September 10, 2001 eating chow, bustin' chops, putting in the flag after nightfall, and you hear the voice of the documentarian, Jules Naudet say, "little did we know..."

It's as if the whole world would be different in a matter of hours...little did we know.

I don't know if I remember the night before.  I did not notice the weather.  I did not notice comtrails in the sky behind gleaming airliners.  I knew my mother was working the election polls in the morning...but I did not know that this was also the waning of my relationship with my mother B. A. (before Alzheimer's).  I knew in three weeks I'd be flying to San Diego from Cleveland...no biggie...I had made the trip without a hitch that July.  Little did I know...



And here we are, eleven years later, and I ask myself,

"What am I taking for granted today?  What do I need to do or say today, as I have no idea if tomorrow will afford me the opportunity?  What are my eyes not seeing today in the frantic pace of life?  What different decisions and choices would I make today...if I knew?"

Haunting questions.

On the eve of September 11, I am solemn and thoughtful, as I realize how fragile the life and freedom we have at this moment truly is...and how it is but a whisper.

 

More to come...check in tomorrow as I reflect on the day...be thinking about where you were on September 11, 2001.

We must embrace the pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.

-Kenji Miyazawa