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1/14/2019 1 Comment picking apart a homei had to be ten years old when my mom set me up in my bedroom with my own bucket of lime green paint, a tattered paint brush, an old sheet that she tossed over the blue carpet & a white plastic bowl full of water. this was after i told her that i’d really love to redecorate my room & this time, i’d like it to be lime green & baby blue themed. so she set me up & let me have at it. i painted every other square on my closet door, painted my desk we rescued from the neighbor’s trash & painted a bright white desk chair given to us by a friend, all lime green.
looking back, the entire room was a blazing eyesore, even with my lime green & teal polka dotted comforter that seemed, at that time, to really pull the room together. & this past weekend i was in that same room, this time without a paintbrush, clearing out my desk drawers & sifting through pictures & paging through journals & staring at the lime green squares painted on my closet door that hadn’t faded one bit. & i let the lesson that was even louder for me than that shade of green sit with me in the room for awhile : how my parents let me create in a space they knew i would one day move on from. this idea of joy & generosity & creativity in the moment. this idea of not taking yourself or your things too seriously, but inviting innovation into a space we’ll inevitably move on from. i’ve been wanting to write about the process of picking apart a home, of walking away from a home that holds layers of memories & childhood dreams. a home that holds the habits we’ve shed as we’ve grown & the pain we’ve endured & the celebrations we’ve held inside its walls. how to give into & validate the grief of it all, yet let go & move on in confidence & strength. but inspiration seems lost on me when i try to find the deeper meaning & symbolism underneath the act of walking around with the people that have made the house a home for you, picking it apart by labeling mirrors & desks & paintings & side tables with sticky notes that determine each item’s new home. by dividing up childhood pictures & albums & treading with each other in the waters of nostalgia. but i needed a takeaway from the closure & for me, it comes back around to the bucket of lime green paint. whatever space, whatever home, whatever room you’re in, i hope you find the freedom to create — maybe not with lime green paint — but with whatever you have, within you or around you, that allows you to give to whoever is in front of you. these are the days we have & even in their unique chaos, there is always opportunity to use the space we have to create. create meals & welcome baskets & letters & sugar scrub & double fudge brownies & poems & whatever our outlet, our passion is, create & share. to bring someone into the space we’ll one day move on from & be generous in our creativity with it & with them & let the joy of living in the imperfection of it fuel our soul’s joy. i promise it will well up inside of us because generosity is joy’s heartbeat & to give is to really live & the homes we’re in will never be forever but how we choose to create in our spaces, what we choose to be busy about, will leave the footprints of love on the doorstep to another person’s heart & what more can we ask for than to have our love take part in refreshing & reminding the world that there’s a God who is constant in His generosity & who lives to invite us into His space — the only space that is ours forever because of the cross — & when we come with our mess, whispers that we’re safe, inside the home of His love & His kindness, steady in their grace.
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AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. Archives
October 2020
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