When you walk into my house, a splash of color will greet you. The gray, white, and black neutralizing colors are only a background balance to the bright colors that mark my rooms. My favorite is the mint-green that encases my living room, making me smile every time I look at it, followed by the ocean blue in the kitchen that washes away the stress I carry in. My bedroom has an accent wall called Romeo, a mature pinkish mark of my girlish dreams still inside. My War Room is pure white with an accent wall of painted gold – which shimmers behind a lace curtain when the sun fills the room like a balloon. You see, colors are not just colors, a room is not just a room, this house is more than a home – here, colors are choices, rooms are destinies, and home is “the hiding place.” A safe haven, a pasture of restoration where The LORD is My Shepherd.
I themed my house, “Lord, My Shepherd,” and I’ve seen the choices become destinies. In my living room, where I chose mint-green, “He makes me lie down in green pastures,” I’ve hugged hurting girls, I’ve wiped many tears, I’ve held shaking hands and prayed peace and blessing. The Lord our Shepherd has calmed my heart in this room, giving me time to relax, destress, watch TV, journal, read, giggle and laugh at I Love Lucy episodes that my brother so thoughtfully bought me for Christmas. When my parents were here visiting, I found them both fast asleep, mouths open, feet up, nearly snoring.
A picture of perfect peace in this pasture. Another day, one of the girls came running in and found me sitting on the couch; she was crying and she collapsed in my arms. I simply held her and let her cry. I didn’t ask what was wrong, I didn’t preach. I let the colors speak life and peace, the Lord our Shepherd, who says, “Come and lie down in peace; I will give you rest.”
A shepherd once said that sheep need 4 freedoms in order to lie down: 1 - free from hunger, 2 - free from fear, 3 - free from friction/tension, and 4 - free from pests. I pray and embrace the freedoms that will continually come in this sweet hiding place.
The ocean blue in my combined dining room/kitchen is pure joy – I love spending time in my kitchen, and I never have before. The blues are a backdrop for freedom and future, as “He leads me beside still waters and restores my soul.” Nothing like going to the kitchen to grab some dark chocolate to restore the soul on heavy day. ;P My kitchen table has already held a crazy amount of people – we have to pull random pieces of furniture and squeeze in at the table in creative ways to fit us all at different times. Whether it’s the girls visiting, my friends or family, or my staff – that kitchen table has heard and soaked in uncountable secrets, dreams, giggles, confessions, conversations in just 6 months. I can only imagine how many more are to come.
My War Room. The wall of gold. I purposely designed this small “storage” room to be my prayer room. I even labeled it on the architectural drawings as the “War Room.” It is 5 x 6 feet of sacred space. It holds devotionals, bibles, prayers, rosaries, paintings, and a creative space for my own drawings, sticky notes, markings on the walls. I feel whole there. Completely whole. It’s held many of my tears and given me space to be rawly me. I’ve had epiphanies, convictions, and battled for others in that room. In a place and culture where darkness is real and tangible, sometimes manifesting as visible, this room is tangibly perfect. The peace, freedom, and power of Love the seeps out of this room and into the house has also been the cause for freedom. For, where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. Some have been set free in this very house.
“The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not be in want.”
I’ve experienced contentment this year 2020 like never before in the past 32 years. I’m learning how to be still, to avoid burnout and rebuild in me what I had destroyed the past few years by not taking care of myself. And in turning my attention to my personal relationship between me and Jesus, my needs, and asking Him to take care of me, I’ve stopped noticing what I don’t have; I’ve stopped looking at the ways other people are cared for or the things and people they have in their lives that I don’t have in mine. I’ve stopped looking at my failures and weaknesses in the wrong way, and started taking responsibility for the things I already have.
I am not in want. I’ve repaired and grown in ways I never knew possible through a breakup, rejection, betrayal, confusion, heartache, loneliness, etc., and I am so satisfied. It is an incredible feeling! It is not that my desires have gone away. The Romeo colored wall is still my chick-flick teenage desire to marry the man of dreams and have the big white wedding and watch how having a father will change the girls (and Benji) in even better ways I never could myself. But I am not in want. I am satisfied. He has given me everything I need and more. In fact, it was in my prayer time that He answered my question, “What do I need?” I need to make time to take care of what’s already mine. Instead of wishing for a future, I didn’t yet have, I needed to care take of the sheep in my own fold first, as well as taking care of myself.
I had many visitors come the beginning of this year, and I wondered why they all came in a cluster. I had thought to myself, Can’t you guys spread the visits out a little? Because I had visitor after visitor just weeks apart. But now we know why. Because the Lord my Shepherd knew what I needed; He also knew what Covid-19 would do and how it would prevent people from coming and ministering to me, so he crammed them all into the beginning of the year – just in His perfect timing. I mean for real…my parents left just a few days early as flights and borders closed JUST after they departed. Talk about a God of timing!
Come and stay with me. And see for yourself how great the Lord our Shepherd truly is and how He manifests His love daily that we may not be in want.
