Finger Painting with Jesus

Life is messy. It's not a paint by numbers, where pastel colors are carefully dabbed inside lines, kept neatly separated and completed in numerical order. No, life is big paper and finger painting.  Vibrant blue, grassy green, and the reddest of red - all splotched in and smeared together. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes just yucky brown. As I've traveled on my journey since Bill died I've come to love this painted mess, the unexpectedness, the excitement, the roller coaster, the journey. If I want to be green today, then I'm green. If I want to be blue, then blue, but honestly, most days I want to be red - vibrant, alive, blood-pumping red, so much more than just breathing. Grief is brown and black and gray and dark.  It's when all those colors get so immersed that there's no longer a picture, just darkness, and once those colors get smeared there's no way for me to undo that.  So do I live with the dark forever? Am I stuck with the brown and black and gray and dark? What do I do? Well, just wait.  In perfect timing Jesus comes and says, "New day - are you ready for new paper?"  For a long time I wasn't ready for the clean, the crisp, the white, the new.  I needed to stare at the black and brown and gray and dark, to figure out what it was, how it was, to learn from it and let it change me for the better. God's word says, "The Lord's unfailing love and mercy still continue, fresh as the morning, as sure as the sunrise." Lamentations 3:22-23 (GNT).  As sure as the sunrise, his mercy is new everyday.  As sure as the sunrise, He's coming with the paper - the clean, the crisp, the white, and today I'm going to be red, covered by his sacrifice, by his blood on the cross - forgiven and free to start anew every day.