When we were first married, one day I decided I wanted to paint the walls red. I gathered the paint and brush, and no joke, did three strokes of paint and decided I was sick of painting. Our wall stayed there with just three strokes of bright red paint for the whole 3 years we lived in that house.
I’m infamous for starting projects and never finishing. Why is that? I am an idea woman, you tell me something to dream up and I’m your girl. But following through is a whole different beast. The work is HARD. You have to keep going after the initial excitement of the new thing wears off. And you have to be careful and fix mistakes. Things I’m not totally crazy about.
I want change, I just don’t want to do the whole process leading up to change. It would be so much easier if I could just take my magic wand and zap! Healthy body. Zap! Positive attitude. Zap! Rehabbed house.
But I’m finding that in that process, the hard process of change, that the magic happens. The slow, but true, transformation of my soul, mind, and body (and home!) is beautiful when I stop and look back where it has come from. And where it is continuing to go. This is where Illuminate Space was born. In this middle, in-between, messy, not quite arrived stage. Beauty is already there, sometimes we just have to throw some light on it!
I can take an old, discarded glass bottle and carefully apply a curated vintage label and it becomes a re-purposed vase at the center of my dining room table. Or an artfully combined potion of essential oils in a roller bottle or candle becomes a multi-sensory experience that grounds me and makes our home a sanctuary, while I’m still in this messy stage growing and evolving. There is hope and beauty everywhere.
I can get so hung up on the fact that I haven’t arrived yet, or become all I want to be. I get frustrated that so many little things still scare me and makes me anxious. But you know what? Being afraid of something, but doing it anyway- that is courage. That I don’t give up and keep going even though it scares me? That is bravery.
So be brave, my friends. I don’t think there is some magical moment where you have it all figured out and feel like you have no more growth to do. You just swing with the pendulum of highs and lows in life and you just keep going. Even it’s just one baby step forward, or one more stroke of red paint, you just keep going.
And burn a candle while you’re at it. It helps.
