| Sunny Side Up August 3, 2005 �2005, Kathleen Gibson My colorful love affair I have a lifelong love affair with color. Today, a vase of yellow lilies, a gift of encouragement from a good friend, decorates my table. Between the grass-green leaves of the Manitoba Maple outside my office window peeks a smiling sky of butterfly blue. My ancient green touring bike waits patiently in the garage for me to take it for a spin, and yesterday, in the withering heat, my daughter and I shared a bowl of melting sherbert. Oranger than orange, and sweeter than sweet. One of my favorite haunts has been various prop shops during musical theater season. Cans of donated paint, remnants of others' household painting projects, littered the tables. The other artists and I mixed them to create nameless colors and poured them into empty butter tubs. Then we painted temporary masterpieces, soon attached to a song and dance for permanent memory. As a child, I got soft in the knees whenever I opened a new box of crayons. The colors, tidily arranged in graduated hues, stole my breath away; made my fingers itch. I always put them back in that same order. I don't know why, except perhaps that it gave us a little more time together, color and I, especially the blues and greens. They're still my favorites. God's colors, I call them. Water and sky. Trees and plants. The Preacher and I painted our kitchen green, several years ago. I mixed the color myself, to match the new-birthed leaves on the willow in the back yard. Even in deep winter, all I have to do is walk into that room, and spring feels just around the corner. An artist friend once painted her kitchen the color of the inside of a pumpkin, with one cobalt blue wall. She painted her living room eggplant purple and the same spring green as my kitchen. Entering her house was like walking into a box of new crayons - it made my heart flutter. A story came my way this week. A rich man offered to buy the boards of an old unused barn, weathered to soft grey by their years of exposure. He wanted to decorate his house in town. "I can't buy new ones that color," he told the surprised farmer. I passed the story on to the friend who gave me the yellow lilies. We've exchanged the colors of our lives for years, she and I - walked through each other's crayon boxes. Rejoiced over the vivid hues, cried and prayed over the somber ones - like the grey of that barn. We're both parked there this week. It doesn't get much press, grey. It's the color of old. Past due. Weary. Unless, like those old boards, we let God use our storms to polish us to a soft sheen of acceptance and trust, until one day he moves us upward - decorations for his heavenly home. It's just that sometimes we'd both like to ask him, "Lord, could'ya hold on the patina development, just for today?" Respond Home |
 |