We have been painting at one of the children’s homes here in Africa. As we were painting we were throwing out blog titles that could be used for any blog we might post because that is a regular conversation. At some point throughout the day someone will say, “Oh that would be a great blog title”.
Anyways, as we painted over all of these unwashed stains and erosion to make it beautiful I couldn’t help but think we do that in our own lives. What I mean is that so many times in our lives we just paint over our scars. If we are dealing with something in our lives we paint a smiley face on to show people that we are happy even though we aren’t or put on a tough face so people won’t see that we are falling apart at the seams. We begin to paint so many layers over all of our hurts, all the cracks on our hearts until we no longer know what the original surface looks like. Painting becomes so natural we don’t realize when we do it or why. It takes a lot of work to chip away each layer. Well, I came on this trip partially to chisel away all of my layers. I have been finding out I need a power tool to get rid of these layers. Our first week in Africa, the Lord took a chisel to part of my paint. He let me see what was at the surface of some things and made me face them. Even though it was painful, it was freeing. I am thankful for it. Sometimes we need that extra help to face our problems. So I am working on not painting over anything else and chiseling away all of my past layers.
