I love to stand in a doorway and imagine possibility. I have never been very good at seeing a room only for what it is. There is something about an empty room—or even an old, tired one—that makes my mind begin to wander. I can look past what is there and see what could be. I see new color on the walls. I see light where things once felt dark. I see warmth and life and something refreshed. Before I ever open the paint can, I have already begun creating the room in my mind. I love that feeling.
I love the weight of a paintbrush in my hand and the smooth movement of it across a wall. I love the careful strokes along an edge, the fine lines around a window or doorway, and the satisfaction of watching fresh paint cover what was there before. I love the smell of paint—the strange, familiar smell that somehow tells me change is happening. There is joy for me in creating something with my own hands. Painting gives me permission to slow down. To concentrate on one small space at a time. One edge. One corner. One brushstroke. I don’t have to finish the entire room at once. I only have to pay attention to the little piece in front of me.
And slowly, the room becomes what I imagined it could be. I think that may be what I love most. I love watching something become. Maybe because I understand becoming differently now. There have been seasons of my life when I wanted so badly to see the finished picture of myself. I wanted to know who I would be when the hard things were over. I wanted to stand on the other side and see everything restored, everything beautiful, everything finally put back where it belonged. But becoming doesn’t seem to work that way.
Sometimes becoming looks like a room in the middle of being painted. Everything is pulled apart. The furniture is moved. The pictures have been taken from the walls. There are drop cloths
on the floor and paint cans scattered around. The old color is still showing through in places while the new color is beginning to appear in others. It isn’t finished. But unfinished does not mean ruined. It means something is happening.
I think about that when I hold a paintbrush now. There are parts of me that are still being restored. Parts that are still finding their color again. There are places where I am learning to be patient with myself, where another coat is needed, where the edges aren’t quite as smooth as I would like them to be. And maybe that is okay. Because I am beginning to understand that joy does not only live in the finished room. Joy is in the becoming.
It is in standing in the doorway and believing there is still possibility. It is in choosing a new color. It is in picking up the brush again. It is in making one careful stroke and then another. It is in trusting that something beautiful can emerge from what feels unfinished. Maybe that is why I love paint. Because every time I stand in a doorway and imagine what a room could become, I am reminded to do the same for myself. To look at where I am—not with disappointment that I am unfinished, but with wonder at what might still be possible.
I am still creating. Still healing. Still discovering. Still becoming. And somewhere between the old color and the new, between the first brushstroke and the finished wall, I am finding something I thought I had lost.
Joy.
still becoming,
Juli
