A world I can control

By: Carole L. Haines

All of us must die eventually. Our lives are like water spilled out on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. But God does not just sweep life away; instead, he devises ways to bring us back when we have been separated from him.
(2 Samuel 14:14 NASB)

“You paint too!” I hear that a lot. It’s one of those precious, quiet-place things I do. I started painting very late in life. I was probably about 40+ years old. We bought a house that had all its old windows replaced. It was a wonderful farmhouse that had raised other families under its caring eaves. I found the old windows in the attic and began to paint on them, just out of nowhere.
We actually had a car stop by with two older women inside one day and they told us they had grown up in that house. We invited them in and learned of their story and the story of some trees planted in our yard. One Black Walnut was planted the day that Franklin Delano Roosevelt died.

But we suffered the loss of that house through job loss, etc. We lost many things through that dark time, but the most poignant loss was the sense of any control whatsoever over our lives. As a mother, you protect your children, as best you can. But we couldn’t protect our youngest from the pain of going through that loss with us. As I sat in a room filled with windows of our new rental home, surrounded by trees, I realized just how little control, if any, I had over anything that happened to us.

I think I broke in that room, I had been cracking, chipping away at layers of false senses of security and control; but that final blow shattered what was left of my sense of security and control. I just sat there, no feelings at all. I had cried every tear my body held and ran out of them before I ran out of grief. My Best Friend saw the change and tried to get me to go to see a Christian Counselor. But being Baltimore-born and raised, I was tough, and felt I should just suck it up and move on like I always did. But this was different, like trying to get up after breaking a leg, and trying to put weight on it. I finally went to a Counselor and when she heard my story, she was blown away at all that we had suffered in a short period of time. She said we had experienced some of the most difficult losses, one right after another.

The Dam in my Heart broke and I literally cried a river. She knew I was a musician and writer, but when she heard I was an artist, she encouraged me to paint out my pain. I laughed inside at the sound of that, but thought, “Why not give it a try?”

Thus began my long journey of painting out my pain. Self-portraits, snapshots of my old home. God led me to listen to other people’s stories and make paintings for them of His Rescue in the midst of their pain. It was a Beautiful thing for me, and I gained back some sense of control. I could paint whatever I wanted, however I wanted, and no one could take that from me. I found solace in a world that I could control, my painting. People have such strong opinions about writing and music. They like you, or they don’t and they feel free to tell you so. But with my painting, I rarely let anyone see them, until recently, when I started feeling led to share them a little more. I’ve had nothing but encouraging words about them, and that blessed me a lot. It’s been a long road back to wholeness, and I will never reach its end ‘til I am with Him. But The Lord is good, and He gave me a verse in the midst of all my loss that I go back to over and over again.

All of us must die eventually. Our lives are like water spilled out on the ground, which cannot be gathered up again. But God does not just sweep life away; instead, he devises ways to bring us back when we have been separated from him.
(2 Samuel 14:14 NASB)

He devised my way back. He will devise yours too.