His Masterpiece Versus My Masterpiece
As I sit and write today, I want to thank everyone who reads and shares these posts with others who might feel some encouragement or just enough hope for their day! I would also like to thank you for your incredibly, kind and encouraging words to keep pressing on and sharing! I have been out speaking again, frequently and so often that it can be overwhelming. This is when the enemy likes to send his arrows of discouragement and doubt! So, please know that I am so greatly blessed and encouraged with your words! We all have things we are struggling with and sometimes, it seems as though we just can’t get our feet back under us! Remember, we can’t but He can do it for us! I was running a few days ago with my most treasured friend that God brought into my life four years after my Cole’s death! Wow, what an incredible blessing she has been to me and we have pounded out many struggles on the streets! She never judges me and I never judge her! We can talk and I mean talk! Like we have talked through 2 marathons, 2 half marathons, many training days and still had stuff to talk about! She is one of my earthly angels! Anyway, I have discussed the image above with her before and have actually done a speaking engagement on this portrait! I wasn’t sure if the timing for this was right but another friend encouraged me to not question God’s prompting or timing! Just write!
I was going to just post the photo but you will miss my entire journey of this portrait! This portrait is an old one for sure and has such a funny story behind it! So, it was actually taken by an amazing photographer on Halloween day! It was a beautiful autumn day and the only day that I could work out getting everyone together! But, oh my goodness, the children were all mad because they had to get dressed up and sit for pictures when they wanted to be getting their costumes on and heading off for lots of Halloween fun! It was always a tradition in our neighborhood to have hay rides and trick-or-treating with friends and finish the night off with a party! It was always an awesome time! You can see now how my children might be a tad upset with my scheduling! Of course, Mike was trying to help me deal with the attitudes of the children and the fact that he needed to be helping the other dads prepare for the evening. Let’s just say, the smiles that you see are completely fake in every way! I am pretty sure there was some intense mumbling and correction going on with everyone! Anyway, we made it through the photo session and had a super fun Halloween evening with friends! The next few weeks were super stressful waiting on the proofs and yes, that was back in the day when you had no idea what you were getting! It wasn’t instant photo like today! All I could think after that whole debacle on Halloween was having to reschedule for more photos! I didn’t have high hopes for those and the dollar signs were clicking in my mind! Well, much to my amazement, all of the photos taken, and there were many, were beautiful! They were exactly what I wanted and the background was beautiful! I chose the perfect one for the most seen spot for our new house! You see, that photo session was to get one particular photo for a very large portrait that was to hang in the home we had been building for a year! Done! Perfect! It was then framed in that big, ostentatious frame that you see in the picture! I loved and treasured that photo because it represented all that I had dreamed of my family to be! It was the perfect representation of all my dreams come true. Isn’t it ironic that we were all bickering during the photo session and most of it directed at momma for the scheduling on a party night. Yet, it turned out beautiful! That photo was even used for the company’s advertisement online and in their studio for a very long time! Now, though, that masterpiece of mine has changed dramatically and is used to remind me that God’s plan and His masterpiece is very different than the masterpiece that I had created for my life!
I would go past that portrait many times a day and sat eating dinner by it almost every night! It was such a beautiful representation of my precious family and everything that I held so tightly in my heart and arms! However, on October 26, 2009, that portrait was forever shattered into millions of pieces, not literally, of course, but figuratively. Now, where that portrait hung, l was forced to trudge past it and sit next to it everyday! Now, the reminder was of the huge gaping hole in my heart and shattering of my family that meant everything to me! I would stand in front of it and cry and scream! I wanted to throw it at a wall, but it was too heavy! I tried! I knew Mike wouldn’t care! He couldn’t look at photographs anymore so it would solve a big problem for him! Anyway, days passed, months passed, and years passed! The portrait stayed the same yet, life was changing and our girls were growing! We needed another portrait but how do you take another portrait like that without one of your children! We didn’t! Our Haden was not interested in another portrait without her brother and it just seemed too heart wrenching! We had been very intentional about taking lots of photos with a nice camera of our own or using our phones! I was really studying this portrait one day, when I began to see that I had based the beauty of my family on my creation and dreams that I had for us, not what God had created! I had the “perfect” family, the “perfect” frame and it was being used to advertise to help others’ families look just like it! I had been creating my family masterpiece for years and framing it up so nothing could damage or hurt it! It looked so great and yes, it was but we are also normal humans with struggles and let’s not forget that portrait was taken while we are all arguing like crazy! No one saw all that! No, my frame kept it all hemmed in so it was a beautiful package!
Our culture struggles so much with others’ opinions. We are exhausted trying to juggle it all so it appears as though we have it all together! We also love to control all aspects of our lives and are not prepared for the invasions that come into our home! Facebook is the home for filtered and unrealistic photos and expectations! I have pictured that portrait and frame in a million pieces and me running around frantically trying to put all the pieces back together! I did it over and over for years yet, it was exhausting and never successful because I couldn’t bring my boy back or change the awful pain that had affected not only us but many others! When Emma was a senior in high school, we took a photograph of our family on a Friday night! It was a quick iPhone picture! I loved it! The girls were smiling and their eyes were bright and Mike was so at peace seeing his girls in a good place. It was then that my story of the portrait took life. I enlarged that photo to the same size as the portrait and chose not to frame that picture. It is beautiful, unexpected, not professional and is more proof to me that God is creating my masterpiece! It is a work in progress and always has been! If I take the frame off or in this case my constraints from my vision and dreams for my children and life, God can do immeasurably more than I could ever dream! My masterpiece may look very different than my hopes and dreams did, but I could never have imagined beauty after trying to pick up and put back together the millions of pieces shattered from this portrait! It isn’t possible for me! I tried and it only ended in pain and disappointment but allowing God to paint outside my lines and have my pieces, we have found some healing, many blessings, and a richness in the masterpiece that God is creating! I think I threw the pieces at him, but in His loving and compassionate hands, He took them so I could find rest! Slowly, He is revealing more to me, but I have to keep giving up the pieces! Clinging to them only keeps me stuck in that ostentatious frame of life!
When we built our new home, one of my greatest desires was to have a photo wall! I have one and guess what hangs right in the middle on that huge wall? It is that big ole portrait with the ornate frame. All of the other photos are framed on that wall but the frames are much simpler and work well together! I wanted this to be a reminder that the portrait that I dreamed of and brought me so much joy can never be again! Cole will never be in another picture and with all the energy I spent clinging to that family, I couldn’t see hope or any future. But, God was creating something different! My family looks different, acts different, and is forever changing! I never want to put my constraints on the work of my Creator ever again because I mess it up every time! He is creating my masterpiece and it is ever evolving and changing! He is holding the pieces and the part of my heart that cannot mend so that while I am here, I will have rest and find joy in the incredible blessings He gives me daily and the amazing plans that He has for myself and my family here on this earth! He didn’t want our story to end with that one Halloween day! Our masterpiece is still being created!
I recently saw Big Daddy Weave in concert and they performed a new song, All Things New! It is beautiful and you should listen to it! If you struggle with control, comparison or trying to design your own life masterpiece, work on it and get help if you need to. It is freeing to not live with the worry of judgement and the pressure to keep it up! It’s your choice as to whether you give Him the shattered pieces or cling to them tightly. However, if you cling, you will only find more pain and disappointment! Give Him the pieces and take down the barriers to your masterpiece so He can start to make things new for you!
Always, Rebecca