Fresh paint can change everything, it would seem.
In a last burst of spring break energy, I decided to paint the hallway to the children’s bedrooms last week.
The hallway was fairly dismal, and had been on my list of potential projects for a very long time. I grabbed some leftover paint and hoped it would look better.
Here is an early photo of the project:
After I painted it, it still looked sort of sad, so I decided to stencil it.
When I was done I was completely smitten. So were the kids.
My heart sang a little when Boy 2 told me, “Now I just feel happy when I walk back to my room.”
Later I cooked snow peas at dinner, and the usual veggie horror caused some drama for a few of the children. There are people eating from trash heaps outside these walls of ours, and I am rewarding good eating with cookies.
Life can be complicated.
A friend texted me while I was cooking about her potential adoption. She had been contacted about several babies needing homes soon. I prayed and begged God to bring those babies home.
It is hard to wrap my brain around how blessed we are sometimes.
Why do I get a happy hallway, when so many other beautiful souls have so little?
It’s not a question I want to brush away. My fortunate situation in life is a painful truth I want to bear and carry close.
At dinner we talked about the many millions of hungry people in the world. We looked at our plates and tried to imagine a life without such abundance. We prayed together for orphaned children who need families.
I don’t know where my children will go someday. I don’t know what mountains they will climb, what dragons they are meant to slay, or how far from me God may call them.
I do know that, if they are willing, God will ask them to do great, glorious, hard things for Him.
I also know that when you have a beautiful, happy memory in your heart, hard things can seem easier.
When you know what it is to be surrounded by love in a lovely place, when you have felt the safety of a refuge from the storms, and when people have held you, laughed with you, and helped you, it is far easier to believe that God will bring you home again someday.
I’m not just making a happy home for our family. I am building a place of memories for us to rest our weary souls.
Pretty paint and soft rugs, warm cookies and beautiful books, silly jokes and happy dances, clean sheets and sweet lullabies; life is all the little things, adding up moment after moment and day after day.
Someday, God will call all His children home, us included. My hallway will be the last thing on my mind when I stand before Him.
But today, stenciled walls and baby footprints in frames remind me that the path to Heaven is paved with blessings that I am meant to pour out in this home and in the world.
Yes, it seems a coat of fresh paint can change everything….
