My friend Donna asked me if I wanted to paint to music for the talent show at a women's retreat over the weekend. I'd never done it before, but I'd seen others do it and decided I would love to give it a try. I think I was too flattered that she would ask me to say no, but then upon further consideration realised that I had no grounds for believing I could even accomplish the feat sucessfully.
Nerves set in. I worried most of all that I wouldn't be capable of producing anything recognisable in a reasonable amount of time before people grew bored, so I decided to plan a little in advance. I also seriously considered not showing up at all. I kept making excuses for why not to go - I just moved, I need to save my gas money, I am terrified, and so forth. The thing is, when I'm afraid to try something what I generally do is Nothing. I procrastinate until the last possible minute. It's crazy, and admittedly stupid, and yet somehow the pressure usually works to my advantage in the end.
I just don't want to be there on the day that it doesn't.
I practiced in the basement of my townhouse by spreading out a sheet, setting up canvass and paint, and turning on a C.D. After about three songs I had produced something fairly decent - not as detailed as I would have liked, but possibly very nice for the intended audience.
I prayed about it. I said, "God, if you have something to say through me to these women, then all right. I will show up, and you just do the work for me, okay?"
Ultimately, that's how He always shows up when I'm painting anyway. I don't know where it comes from - it seriously just seeems to flow out of me like magic and not have anything to do with anything based on reality... I guess I just don't have words to describe it, so instead I'll tell you what ended up happening.
I arrived at the conference feeling pretty jittery, but mostly adrenelined. They called my name to go first, which I think not long ago would have completely thrown me, but I got out my dropcloth and just began putting things together as if I did this sort of thing all the time.
While I was setting up, I was extremely conscious of the fact that I had at least fifty women in a fairly small space all staring at me, so I started talking. I talk when I'm nervous, sometimes a lot.
"Hello, there!" I piped, thinking my voice sounded higher than normal, "My name is Heather Hockin. It's really nice to be here meeting all you nice ladies. I was thinking maybe I should say something before I start painting..."
I started squirting blobs of paint onto my pallete as I spoke, noticing that my hand was shaking but counting on the possibility that they would not notice. "Because this is a conference about joy, I thought maybe I'd say a little something about that. I think joy is kind of an elusive thing at times - we glimpse it in the eyes of our children, or we feel a rush of it when we see someone we love, or when something makes us laugh. Something that never fails to bring joy to my heart is my painting. Honestly, I haven't painted much in the past thirteen years. I was married to someone who was controlling and a little abusive, and... I don't know, somehow all the joy seemed to get sucked out of me..."
I started setting up a couple glasses of water and my brushes on the table they'd provided for me. I felt kind of silly, wondering what I'd said that for, and I was almost done getting ready, so I said in a rush: "But I think God gives each and every one of us our own unique gifts, and that when we find what those are and we use them right- that's when we find true happiness in our lives."
I turned around to see them for a moment and added, "I have never done this before, so I'm gonna pray now!"
A chuckle went around the room, but they settled right in as I blurted "Heavenly Father (when I'm especially nervous I spout religious platitudes, apparently) I just want to thank you for each woman who came to this retreat, and I pray that my painting might speak to their hearts - only You know what they each need to hear, and I pray that this would all be for Your glory and not my own. Amen."
Then I nodded at the lady in charge of the music, who put in the CD of worship music I had brought in. The music started softly, building up the way the song I'd chosen does. "Through you the blind will see, through you the mute will sing..."
At first I was very much aware of all the eyes on my back. I dipped my brush in yellow and stared for a moment at the canvass I'd pre-painted with dark blue along the top that faded down into a pale sky blue by the time it swept across the bottom. (This was to save time while I painted the main objects in. )
I dabbled a little paint line in a half-circle against the left side of the canvass, like half a sun poking out, and started filling it in with yellow.
Suddenly the chorus of
I Am Free hit, and several women behind me began singing along, and when the echo came back "I am free to run! I am free to dance! I am free to live for you..." Something soared loose from inside and I stabbed my brush against the side of the little sun-circle and swept it across the canvass in one smooth arc, my eyes fixed on the bright color and my mind clearing of everything except the colors and the brush in my hand.
As
Sing for Joy began to play, rays formed across the canvass, darting out from the side and filling in with shades of red and orange until a flower formed, and as it bloomed in all its warmth, so too did my real and uncomplicated feeling of sheer joy. By the time
Blessed Be Your Name came on I was swirling paint onto my brush and slapping it onto the painting with something like recklessness, caught in the moment and the music and telling my own story in bright acrylic paint.
I moved to the end of the longest petal of the flower and began streaking together a tight ball of paint-lines, then connected them by leaves and a stem, creating a tight bud of the same vibrant shades of yellows and orange.
Heart of Worship started and I paused a moment and thought, "Oops - I did this in only three songs in practice!" but all the women again began singing along. I felt the crowd with me and relaxed.
I smirked and abruptly jabbed my brush onto the pallete and mixed all the colors together into a dark green mass, then slapped a big blob right onto the flower. It was cool how I could literally feel the entire room cringe at the jarring dark color being forced against the flower, and awesome because only God and I knew what was going to happen next. In just about seven separate strokes I had created the silloute of a woman dancing, arms stretched outward, seeming to leap joyfully straight from of the petals and into the sky.
When I turned grinning back to face everyone, the room burst into waves of loud applause. People shouted at me to pick the painting up and show it around to everyone, so I did, and by the time they'd all settled down I'd made up a name for my work. "Thank you, thank you all. This painting... I have always liked the saying 'Bloom where you're planted.' And after I'd heard this conference was about joy, I read this quote that I also liked, that says 'Happiness blooms when you do.' This painting is called 'The Joy of the Lord is My Strength.'"
Another burst of applause.
And afterward at least thirty of those women came to me, individually and in groups, to tell me how much they loved my painting, but more important to me was how many of them had a story of how it had blessed their heart, and each one unique to that particular woman.
There was one women who told me, in tears, of how she'd just been to the funeral of a beloved cousin, and how to her the woman dancing in the picture would always be her cousin, whose favorite verse had been "The joy of the Lord is my strength."
Another woman said that she had focused more on my face while I was painting, and had been moved by how happy I looked, and how it seemed as if no one else was in the room.
One lady boasted that while all her friends had assumed the painting was of a sunburst, she had known all along that it must be a flower.
A younger girl told me that she felt as if the girl in the painting was rising up out of something dark and red and into the bright yellows and growing toward the light, while another woman said that to her it was if the woman was reborn, become a new creation as God promises if we follow Him.
I self-consciously thanked everyone for their compliments and then sat down to watch the rest of the evening's entertainment, which was varied and fascinating. A woman told the funniest story I had heard in ages, someone showed everyone how to decorate a cake and managed her frosting just as gracefully as any artist with paint, while someone else sang
It Is Well loudly and beautifully enough I imagined the rafters trembling. A very talented lady played a song she had composed herself on the piano for her sister, who had helped her through a debilitating depression, and you could hear the story in the notes. There was even a woman who could levitate a pea - that was hilarious, and to me every bit as entertaining as the music.
Most moving of all was when a young mother of nine came forward, dressed all in black, with her long dark hair falling into her eyes. She stood self-consciously and read a few short essays, but as she read she gained confidence and her words sprang from the paper and into my heart. She saved the best for last, a poem about her little boy. It was called "Love Waits."
The poem began by talking about how, when she had been pregnant with her son she had to wait many long months for his arrival, but that love waits patiently. And when he arrived he was beautiful and perfect.
In time, she felt her little boy slipping away from her, farther and farther, until he barely seemed to recognise her anymore. He was caught up in the agonizing, lonely world of autism and could not be reached, but she waits patiently, because love waits.
Then she took the poem and turned it around, turned it into a beautiful statement of how much God loves us, how he made us beautiful and we are perfect in His sight. But we keep slipping further and further away from him, not realising in our pain and our lonliness that God is waiting patiently for us, because God is love, and God waits.
It made me cry.
While she was reading it, you could hear her voice catching, and the woman sitting next to me leaned over and said, "What do you plan to do with your painting? Do you sell them?"
I was trying to listen, so I said absently, "Oh, I don't know. I've never figured out how to market them..."
The lady nudged me and nodded at the woman in black, standing alone and reading her heart out to a room of strangers. "She loved your painting. you know."
"Really?" I blurted, surprised, "I'd
give it to her!"
After everyone was done performing for the night, people started splitting up into groups to snack and play board games, and at least twenty different women found me and either asked if I would sell them the painting or told me a reason why I ought to give the painting to them.
"My sister and I really love flowers - I said to my sister, 'I wonder if she would sell that to me, or maybe just give it to me...'"
"That would look really nice in my livingroom..."
"Hey - thanks for the painting, Heather - can I take it to my room when it's dry?"
"You are so talented. You remind me of my niece - she would love a painting like that; she loves flowers..."
I found myself looking around for the writer, the woman in black.
Someone said that she had to hurry up and get home, because it was her son's birthday and she'd promised she'd be there by eight o'clock.
I found her and I handed the painting to her, saying shyly, "Hey - you almost forgot your painting."
She stared at me. "Did someone tell you to give this to me?" she demanded.
I shrugged. "Someone mentioned that you liked it. I had a feeling that you just might be the only person here who would never ask me for it, and an even stronger feeling that God wants you to have it."
She smiled and gave me a huge hug. and I was too shy to really look at her, but I was glad I'd done it.
So many women had told me their stories, and some of them had really touched my heart, but somehow I felt like this woman needed that painting more. If nothing else, I understood how hard it is sometimes to share the things that are closest to our heart. And I could see that she understood, as I have learned, that it's those things that are hardest to tell that do the most good.
I'm giving the copy that I practiced with at home to the woman whose cousin died.
