My Jesus Journal

Messes Made Beautiful

                I am a very creative and artsy person, so when I was given the opportunity to go to a painting workshop a couple weeks ago I couldn't say no. Normally, when it comes to painting I do one of two things...acrylic painting or nail painting. I had never really used watercolor paint before this workshop.

The hostess started the workshop by having someone talk about how art came to be and different uses of art in the bible. She then explained to us that the workshop was all about praise painting. You have some worship music playing and you let God take control of the paint brush.

As I heard music playing around me a song that I love popped into my head. "Gracious Tempest" by Hillsong. One of the lines in the chorus is 'Your love is like a storm'. This line made me think of a rainy day with the sun shining beautifully through the clouds. This was what I wanted to paint.

I started off with two clouds. Best clouds I have ever painted, not gonna lie. I almost wanted to stop there in fear of messing the picture up. But, I had an image in my mind that wasn't complete on the paper yet. Since the clouds were in the upper left hand corner, I filled in the rest of that corner with yellow and then started to make yellow lines come out from the other side of the clouds.

I did NOT like how the lines turned out. But I kept going.

The next step was the sky behind the sun. I decided to make the sky a light blue color. I didn't want anything bright because I wanted yellow to be the brightest color. I painted this light blue color around the yellow lines and leaned away from my paper. My face scrunched up. This didn't look any better than the previous step. I got discouraged.

I looked around me at all of the paintings that were done by the other ladies there. My eyes scanned over beautiful color combinations and beautiful finished products. This beautiful picture that I had planned out in my head looked nothing like what I had painted onto my paper. My paper didn't hold the beauty that all of these other paintings did. It was a mess. I really wanted to give up at this point, or even hand my paintbrush to someone else...but I am a perfectionist, I couldn't leave my paper like this, and if I let someone else finish it then it wouldn't be mine.

I grabbed a paint marker and wrote the lyrics 'Your love is like a storm' in calligraphy on the side of the paper that didn't have the clouds. Calligraphy is my FAVORITE...This small step made my opinion on this painting change, but I was still missing something. The rain.

I dipped my brush into the water, swirled it around in the gray paint, and started to make thin lines and dotted lines come down the paper. I did this for about 15 minutes, making sure they weren't too thin or too dark. I put my brush down in the water and took a step back from my painting. It was not the picture that I originally had in my head...but I loved it.

I think that, a lot of times, this is how we view life. We have this plan/image in our mind of what we want life to look like and so we get started to make it come true. Maybe the first step of our plan looks great, but along the way things get messy. We get so discouraged in this messy time! But what are we going to learn if we go from start to finish immediately? Sometimes the 'mess' makes things more beautiful in the end. Sometimes the 'mess' makes us happier because we get to see what beautiful things were made from it.

Life isn't always going to be pretty. We're going to go through dark times, but God has something beautiful planned for your life! When you're stuck in the darkness maybe God is trying to show you that there is something in your heart that needs changing! Don't cry out to Him and ask Him to change your situation, cry out to Him and ask Him to change your heart! There is always room for improvement in our lives, and when we start asking God to change our hearts our eyes are going to be opened to the beauty in the 'mess' around us.

Don't compare your life to the lives of people around you. We all go through different messes at different times. Just because you see the beauty in someone else's life doesn't mean that their life was always that way or even that they see their life as beautiful as you do.

If your life is messy that means one thing: it's not complete. Let God take the paintbrush; let Him paint your life from start to finish!