What's The Passion For: When God turns our messes into masterpieces: lessons from my three year old on grace & God's love

My little girl LOVES to paint. So when we woke up this morning to an exceptionally gloomy & chilly day, naturally, we decided it'd be the perfect thing to do. Now my three year old is pretty trustworthy & self-sufficient so after helping her get everything set up, I pretty much just let her do her thing (which is helpful for me anyways since her 10-month old baby brother --who's into everything these days-- keeps me pretty busy).

She painted several beautiful pictures & then she decided she was going to do one more. She wanted to get more paint & I told her she could pick one more color since we didn't want to get too much because she was almost done. Well, I got distracted.. & then a few minutes later she told me she was all done with her last painting, which she proudly named "black octopus" :) I praised her for her latest piece of creative genius & then told her to go get washed up & ready to go.

"Black Octopus"(you see it too, right?!;)

Then I look over to find that she had filled every single slot in her little paint palette to the very tip top with all different colors of paint.. & I wasn't pleased. BUT, luckily, I have a God who is gracious & loving & likes to remind me to be the same by teaching me necessary & helpful lessons through my little 3 year old artist.

I obviously reminded her of the fact that I asked her to pick only one more color & that I was sad that she didn't listen & that now we would have to waste all of this fresh paint (which isn't cheap). I asked her what we should do about this & at first she suggested throwing it away. I assured her we would most certainly not be doing that & asked her to think of something else we could do with it. She thought about it for a minute & she shrugged & said, "Well, we could use it!"

Since we were heading out the door to go to the park due to the wonderful fact that the sun finally decided to come out we really quickly & carefully (so as not to get it on our "non-paint" clothes) took the paint palette & used it as a sort of stamp & dumped & spread all around the remainder of the paint. We used two more pieces of paper & covered them with the paint & the result was truly breathtaking and beautiful.

It offered a unique texture (thanks to the excessive amount of paint;) & barrage of colors & swirls & circles from the outline of the palette slots. Makenna was very pleased, as was I. The best part about it all was the lesson I learned & that I was able to teach her through this sweet moment. She then apologized (again) for using so much paint when I asked her not to & I told her that it was ok & that I forgave her & then I was able to show her something really cool about the whole situation & in turn, about God. I said, "ya know, Makenna if you hadn't made that mistake we wouldn't have these two beautiful masterpieces now!" Her eyes lit up as she nodded excitedly & seemed freed by the fact that I wasn't mad at her & that the situation which started out not great had been turned into something positive.

Another one from today: "The Colorful Sea"

How often does this resemble our attitude when we know we've failed God? When we've disobeyed & are ashamed & feel worthless, useless, like garbage, good for nothing.

Then God comes in & urges us to take a second look.

Beloved, You are not a waste.. you are too precious & valuable to Me & most definitely DO NOT belong in the trash.

He helps us see things from a fresh perspective & then turns our greatest flaws & failures into these precious, teachable moments that result in the greatest of outcomes that we never would've expected.

His grace is more than enough to cover our mistakes & not only that but turn them into this glorious masterpiece that we would've never gotten had we not made the mistake in the first place. Life is beautiful & then it's messy but with God there's always grace & so much love & a glorious outcome promised in the end & that is so encouraging & utterly humbling, my dear friends.

Props to my girl for helping me to see this today & for creating so freely & passionately. And to my Heavenly Father for using her to get to me in this way & reminding me of the wonderful truth of His unending love & amazing, life-changing grace. For showing me that glimmer of hope I need as He peers at the beautiful mastery of the big picture when I'm ready to throw in the towel & reminds me not to give up, because He's not quite done & despite what I think or how I feel there's still some use for me yet. The outcome will undoubtedly be stunning and so worth it all.