Painting For Two

I am working on a special Valentine's Day gift for my girlfriend, even though Valentine's Day has come and passed. We're actually working on it together. The project is to paint a set of cookie jars, each shaped like pueblo houses. They rest together as one piece. That is to say, when they're placed side by side, they look like one piece of pottery. But they're designed to hold separate ingredients. And can easily be placed apart from each other.

We've been painting them at a local pottery shop in Tulsa. Today was our second of what could be three or four visits before we get every detail and every color exactly like we want it. I'm painting one of the houses. She's painting the other. Practically everything about mine is smaller in scale, including the windows (which I'm finding to be the hardest of all to paint.)

And because I'm painting the smallest of the two houses, I'm noticing I have less room for error on some things, like on the wooden window frames. And the more I paint, I notice myself forming a system...a way to tilt the house to a certain precise angle, for instance, or a way to hold the brush to steady my hand as I paint the smallest detail on the window seal.

I have to admit, I'm getting quite anal about the whole process, even though it's supposed to be fun. What began as an adventure, I quite neurotically, have carried to it's obsessive conclusion. And here I am, in the middle of the afternoon, with the woman I love, stressing over the fact that my brown got too much into my blue or that my hand is shaking too much to make a straight line with the paint.

As I quietly yell cuss words under my breathe, I become painfully aware that I am turning what should be fun into what is grudging a chore. And I am complicating it all by stressing over the details. This is...I am sad to say...the story of my life.

Oh, what a day at the pottery store can teach us about life. Oh what a moment with paint can show us about how we deal with problems, and how we handle life's challenges.

We'll go back to the pottery shop Wednesday to finish our painting. And then, we'll let the workers in the shop glaze the pottery. And we'll be called back a few days later to pick up the finished product. I sit here, now, telling myself it will be the coolest thing ever, to have something in my house that we both made...that we made together. To symbolize the nature of our relationship. And something in me is afraid that the small imperfections in our design will stand out and scream AMATEUR to anyone who sees the finished product in my kitchen.

But you wanna know what is funny...I know that something won't turn out right. And that that something will be the most endearing and cool thing...the thing that sparks a memory...that starts a conversation...that reminds both of us that we made this together.

I need this process to help get over my obsessiveness. And I'm glad we're doing it.

And as I sit quietly in my house tonight, walking through the moments of today in my mind, together with a pot of soup (to warm my bones of the cold day,) I am overcome with the presence of the Father. There is healing already from the things that came up in my spirit at the pottery shop.

I think the devil makes his living sometimes by just breaking our joy down to something of lesser quality. I think that's enough for him. It can be. It might have been today, with me.

My heart is so fragile. The soup I've made is setting on a knitted pot holder (a present from my Granny a few years back.) Steam seeps up in the air. I bend over to the coffee table to take a sip. And then to pound out a few words on this blog. And between each there is another step. I am quietly getting back to God on this matter. Waiting. Whispering. And Listening for what He has to say about His love.

Talking with God is so difficult for me. My heart fills up so quickly with the immediate thing...the emotion of the what is here in front of me. The possibility of what's next. A to do list. A flashing light on my phone, signaling a missed call. Who could it be? Or getting lost in the presence of a sweet sounding voice in a song. I am haunted by the existential presence of life. The things of the moment are a distracting signifier of how much I need God.

Jesus? I am here. And I am waiting on you to speak to me on this. I want joy again. And I will wait with my pot of soup and listen for what you have to say.