Paint Dates and and How to Dodge the Design

The other day I had a hankering for some mimosas and a painting session.

I called up one of my newish girlfriends K, and asked her if she would be interested in a paint date, she agreed. So I went to work setting up the paint stations, getting the brushes cleaned, and unwrapping the glowingly virginal canvases.

I had a little skip in my heart.

By the time she arrived I was burgeoning with ideas for color palettes, theme, and direction so I quickly began squeezing the tubes of paint and working up some good artistic roux.

I had already begun my wash, which was an eggshell blue and was slowly lulling myself into an expression coma, one that I have been craving for awhile. Tongue out, and licking my lips- the hair on the back of my neck began to prick. It suddenly occurred to me that someone was watching me. Intently.

I reluctantly pulled the brush off, and slowly looked up. K had the most panic stricken expression, I would say it was borderline phobic.

Her canvas was empty, her brushes still dry, and her face twisted in confusion.

"I am the least creative person in the world." Her words hung in the air. "I have no idea what to do."

The strange thing is that it had never occurred to me that someone wouldn't have a single creative leaning when given the tools to do so. This girl is a tiger in a sales meeting. I have heard her sell almost anything to anyone who has ears, and to be honest I am a little scared of her. I have never once ever heard her say that she wasn't capable of something.

Let alone something that was so incarnate to my life.

I smiled, helped her picked out a few colors, gave her a few little pointers and tried to convince her to just go with it.

She slowly but surely began, and every now and then would look over at me in search of confirmation. I must have heard her mumble over 10 times how she was not creative, and that this was not something she was good at.

Hours after she left, I couldn't shake the feeling that I had just realized something deeper about my what my life design is supposed to look like.

K is meant to be in the office, she flourishes under the watchful eye of managers and deadlines. I wither.

But when I thought about it a little more, it was more than just environmental or ethical conditioning. It isn't just the fact that I like to paint and she likes to make cold calls, there was a rudimentary separation of soul, we were created differently.

Living in a city like Nashville, you tend to tell yourself that everyone is creative, everyone is a musician, everyone thinks that they are the next big thing. And so you live under this overhang of per assumed restrictions in which you become a part of the melting pot of anonymous chick singers that wear thin scarves and graphic tees while using words like sick and chill.

I have knowingly separated myself from the race, I only have one thin scarf and feel like a poser when I even attempt to scoot the word sick into conversation.

K reminded me that I am not ordinary.

I am reading a book called, Better than My Dreams, and I came across this, "The irony is that whatever our gifts are, they feel ordinary inside our own skin."

I was subtly reminded that my creativity is a gift, and while there are a lot of us that are artsy, no one ever creates the same. Everyone has their own muse, their own method and their own madness that keeps them from both.

This is the lie I have been telling myself lately, my most recent miles of madness.

My husband is practical, I am not. He likes linear lines, I like spider webs. He places his bets on the safe side of the fence and I like to hop fences just to create rips in my jeans.

I tell myself that he respects me only when I am practical.

But he fell in love with me because I leave the fridge open, and love to dance around the house listening to Tift Merritt.

Yes, there are reasons that I can not just chase after the wind right now, but sometimes you have to have faith not just plans.

I came across another enlightening morsel in this book, Frederick Buechner says that there is a hidden intersection in life- the converging of two separate forces- and the spot where they meet has your name on it.

He explains it this way, "The place God has for you is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."

And then I deeply sigh.

I don't care about security. I don't care about all the things that it looks like I might from the outside. I have dedicated my life these past two years to predictable tomorrows even though that isn't the way I was designed.

I was designed to splatter paint, to find beauty in the fray of the day.

I know that life is just a chapter of seasons that serve a purpose for that place and time. I remember telling my soul-sister and friend A the other night that I am at that point in my life where all of my "what if's" are slowly becoming "what is".

And then I realized something, until I become desperate nothing will ever change.

Its a scary thing to ask God for a true sense of desperation for the life design he has for you, because I can already tell that pain will be a passenger for the ride, but I can feel it welling up inside of me.

Desperation will be my ticket out of Dodge.