Take 2

October 25, 2007


When you start a blog, you should write... not leave it blank. So here's take 2.

I almost (accidentally) painted my home "Key West" purple a few years ago. My neighbor claimed the bright shade would have fit fine in sunny Florida where the tropic breeze calms pastel pallets. Atlanta suburbs required benign exteriors.

The painter arrived while I was driving car pool, the morning after I'd decided to tame the color. He'd been in jail on a traffic violation so I was certain I had another day before paint met house. When I pulled into my driveway, however, the race had begun; the horse had left the starting gate; the train was chugging down the tracks. A a third of my house was purple. While a soft morning light tamed the spectacle, bright afternoon rays set fire to the color. My house lit up like a bright colored Easter egg.

Remembering the embarrassment I felt in high school after getting a new perm--awkward, nerdy, out of place--I hid inside all night. When the neighbors left for work the following morning, I tried again.

By dinner time, my home sported a gray-purple color with regal black trim. The finished product produced a classic charm instead of a tacky tone. My neighbor's husband recovered from near cardiac arrest - or so I've been told - and I nicknamed myself, "Susan of the Purple House."

For right beneath the surface view is a mistake of catastrophic proportions. And right beneath a layer of grace is a sinful soul in need of a Saviour.

My oldest son shares my creative bent. He sings, plays the piano, forgets details when stressed, and accidentally painted his new desk purple a month ago.

"How did you paint the entire desk purple, when we painstakingly chose brown?" I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders in true teenager fashion and replied "I used the only can of paint I saw."

So after two coats of light beige and another to allow a special crackle finish, the top brown coat was instead, purple. If we hadn't taken months to paint my grandmother's desk from the 1940's, I might not have been so befuddled. But it had taken months to get to the fourth coat, and just when the project should have reached completion, I found myself staring at a purple desk - the same purple as the exterior of my home. Nathan had grabbed the can of paint purchased to cover new pieces of siding. The quart of brown rested in a Sherwin William's bag close by.

Sammy, my younger, analytical thinker defended his brother,"Mom, I wouldn't make that kind of mistake. But I've lived with you two long enough to know this makes sense."

In response, "Susan of the Purple House" simply dubbed her oldest child, "Nathan of the Purple Desk." And a few coats of paint later, a brown desk with beige crackles appeared and now sits in his room.

"Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" (2 Cor. 5:17)

I'd like to always get it right the first time. But my house, and now my son's desk, remind me of grace - a grace sufficient for my every need; a grace that transformed this ragamuffin into a Child of God; a grace that covers a multitude of sin.

"Oh to grace how great a debtor daily I'm constrained to be..." (Samuel Willoughby Duffield)