Maybe that's why it's usually a stretch for my husband. He's used to being the unpredictable one, and in this one arena of our marriage, he never knows what to expect from me.
The list of creative genius is long, but not always successful, as many of them involve paint, and everyone knows paint is always a gamble. Here are just a few:
- There was the time I was cooped up in an ice storm with four kids for three days while he was preaching in India. He came home to a ten foot wide prayer painted across our dining room wall, all by hand, and all with eyeshadow applicator brushes. (It was all I had at home, and I couldn't risk the icy roads with the kids for something as trivial as paint brushes. And besides, that much time invested in one project ensures it will never get painted over.)
- There are the many, many times I've written dramas to illustrate his sermons, most of them requiring him to stretch out of his comfort zone and be my acting partner.
- There are, of course, the countless times he's come home to furniture being completely re-arranged in one room, or two, or three.
- There was the time I stayed up all night painting a scripture across our bathroom wall. No one will ever doubt that God heals all our diseases after a trip to the restroom at our house.
- There was the infamous time I decided to refinish our kitchen table, and it came out a horrid pepto-bismol pink. He graciously offered to buy me a new one, but supported me as I tried again and achieved a lovely farm-house red. We may be the only family in our small town sitting down to a red table to eat, but he has never once complained.
- There was the three hundred pound fireplace mantle I made him stop and barter for when I saw it standing all lovely in the midst of a house demolition, which was followed by the process of finding where it would look the best in our house, and then thinking it would look better over there...
- There was that chunk of our savings that he willingly invested into my dream of recording and producing a worship project. "All Things New" is two years old now and has been an instrument of hope in hundreds of lives.
- Then there was the brilliant idea of hauling the afore-mentioned red table to the lake shore and setting up a beautiful tablescape for our Christmas photo shoot. Man, I love that picture.
He has somehow always intuitively known creativity is the part of me that makes me come alive. And he has not only refrained from squelching it, even when it inconveniences him, but he has nurtured it.
Every person has something deep within them that makes them who they are. Something that fulfills their soul and gives them purpose. Something God placed within them that expresses His own heart. For me, it is the desire and ability to create. And my husband's effort to recognize that, encourage it, and applaud me for it means he is a part of causing me to become who God dreamed I would be.
And isn't that the goal of marriage? To be a help-mate? To spur one another on to fulfilling every dream and plan and purpose God has for our lives?
I believe it is.
And when two people who are living the lives God intended come together as one, the finished product can't help but be a work of art.
