Monday’s Mess – Underneath the Pretty

Sir–A thought to help us through these difficult times: Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. –Ian MacLaren

“Be kind. You never know what is in someones knapsack.” – Amy Hawkins (one of my besties)

“Be kind. You never know what is underneath the pretty.” – Jerusalem Greer

 

This is how my house looked Saturday before our Candlemas party. It was so clean and cozy.Isn’t it pretty?

It’s good for me to remember how lovely it is.

All too often, all I see are the imperfections. All the ways this house is failing me and I it. 

But on a day like today I am so grateful for this lovely, imperfect, house that has become our home. A patient constant comfort despite all my unkind words about the sideways stove top and single bathroom.

Today was hard y’all. The mess was big and real and at times I thought I might be buried alive under it. And I am not just talking about the laundry.

I am talking about all the mess of human hearts and insecurities and issues of control and scantly filled emotional tool boxes of life.

This mess that comes when you are trying to do what’s best and yet, somehow you keep missing the mark, or maybe the mark keeps moving, or maybe the mark was never clear.

Trying to be Jesus hands and feet upon this big, beautiful, broken earth can be brutal. Right now I am flailing around like a kid who hasn’t learned how to swim in his life vest.I am drowning and floating all at once.

The lines between my own inadequacies and the complicated circumstances I find myself in, are blurred and fuzzy.I can do better and I can do nothing more and there are no easy answers.

So tonight I am grateful for a dry roof, for a fire, for a hot dinner, for the a place to rest my weary soul. 
For a home to come home to.

I am thankful for family and friends who see past the pretty, and are not overwhelmed by the unfinished, tangled, mess that is underneath. Who circle around me and sing songs of peace and hope and light, when the darkness threatens to fill ever nook and cranny.

For a tribe that believes, that in the end, Love always wins.

peace and blessings friends-
J

Make-Do {and make lovely} Mondays-Wall Art Happy

 Hope your Monday was lovely friends.

I am snuggled down on this very couch under quilts while a heavy rain storm passes over.

Sweet Man is on dinner duty and the boys and I are catching up on some DVR recordings.

I am off to the doc tomorrow to see if this cold is ever going to go away, and I have a long list of to-do’s before the book release. Life is good and busy and full of questions as usual. But I think I may have answered one this weekend – what to hang above our sectional!

 

Remember my whole not spending money on things for the home during Lent? Well so far so good. Also, I feel as if a bit of home decorator fire has been lit beneath me by this decision. Somehow, not surprising when I really think about it, I find the challenge of making-do with what I have to be incrediablly inspiring. (So far. Like I have said before, this could all change in the blink of one great garage sale.)

 

 

Ever since I brought my $60 Goodwill sofa home I have been trying to figure out what to do on the HUGE wall behind it. Especially because now everything is slightly off center.
(Well, I do know what I want to do with it long term, but that is way down the list of things to do around here…) Also, eventually I want to have a couple of slipcovers made for the sofa- one in a pink red and one in white- but until then I have to work  with this dirty yellow color, which isn’t horrible, but isn’t my first choice either.

 

At some point last week it finally occurred to me what might just work. My Thrift Store Art Collection (as I refer to it) would probably look pretty great above the sofa.  Or at least some of it. Of course only two of the paintings that I settled on are thrift store found -the two yellow paintings. The boot and the nest were painted by Jeanetta and the chair was painted by my sister Judea in college. But they remind me of my thrifted art, so I lump them in with the group.

I left room for a few more paintings to make their way to the wall, perhaps a cow or a barn? Maybe both? As I am re-nesting in this house I am trying to find the balance between light and airy/colorful and collected.  I want things to be less cluttered than before, but I also like a lot of my stuff, and I love color. I just can’t help it.   I think this arrangement does a pretty good job of meeting that goal. What do you think?