As I unpack and regroup after the whirlwind of action in these past couple of weeks, I find myself feeling stunned and maybe even a little amazed by the intensity of it all. That is, I’ve been running so fast and working so hard that there hasn’t even been time to neatly experience or make sense of things along the way. I just got back home today. It feels like I’ve been away for a long time and, in a way, I have been. As I was attempting to unearth all the clutter from the kitchen counters after the flurry of so much activity, I found a gift that my friend gave to me a couple weeks ago at a women’s retreat that I attended and had been asked to speak at. It is such a special gift from someone very dear to me and, something about finding it woven into the whirlwind of movement and change really struck me deeply. It caused me to stop. It caused a few tears to fall for no other reason than powerfully simple release.

I don’t know when it happened, the exact moment of “no turning back,” but it did happen and now I find myself moving at an ever increasing speed in that direction. I stop and cry again, even as I write this, because the truth is that I do know the exact moment of no return. It is the day of Carl’s death. The moment I gave my life to God while standing next to the Bratlien kitchen table, looking somewhere in the direction of Barbarah’s highchair, the light green wall, and the window that I was not even looking out of. It was the moment when everyone else was talking and I was somewhere else entirely…giving my life to God.

Yeah, so I guess this is what it looks like to give one’s life to God. It’s a giant mess. It’s the biggest faith leap. It’s the ultimate surrender. At its center it is truest peace, deepest purpose, a confidence that is not my own.

Eventually, I’ll get the clutter sorted. This part here in the middle is the part that simply requires all of my faith. Like the hundreds of paintings I’ve done over the past 8+ years, there is this part where it all looks like a giant mess, a failure, a weird attempt of the impossible. But I’ll do my best to live like I paint: as a channel for God. I’ve never taken credit for my paintings because I have always felt that they aren’t “by me,” rather simply “thru me.” Painting is one thing, but submitting my entire life to this way of being is another thing entirely.

For now, my prayer is this:

God bless this mess.

There’s no turning back now. I wouldn’t want to, even if I could. Abba, I love you beyond measure. I’m yours. Even in those dark places I’d rather not go, you are my candle, my light, my safety, my reassurance. Let my life be the next painting.

Amen.