The Eight Month Door
I have been painting our front door for 8 months.
I know, it’s ridiculous.
8 Months to paint a door seems excessive.
But it is an intricate door. The kind with all the squares in it. So much detail that people have reached out over social media begging me to tell them where I got my doors.
I shrug and tell them it was just left to me by the previous owners and deep down, I hate them.
Not because of anything other than the fact that those doors have been a pain in my side since I painted that first stroke onto its stained red front.
Old, stained red, and the type of wood that laughs at people who paint it, mocking them with its ability to soak up paint and make it seem like it never happened at all.
I would get a coat on and then a kid would need me, or it would rain for a week or the weather would be too cold, or honestly… I just would plain forget it. I’d forget about the door that needed love and attention and enough care to get it completely covered. Enough to make it stick.
I was in the middle of painting the final coat yesterday while the weather was perfect and my children were napping. I noticed the cracks and crevices of the door and the way that the paint soaked it all in in a way that was completely maddening yet carried depth and weight for me that I didn’t know I was going to see.
It was a moment. Holy and pronounced. The kind where you are knee-deep in thought but if you were on tape you would look like a dazed lunatic…. you know the kind.
You see we moved to this town less than 2 years ago.
Packed bags, plans failed, disappointment strong and feeling really really really alone.
Brushstroke.
Finding out we were pregnant.
brush stroke.
trying new churches.
brush stroke.
reconnecting with distant family.
brush stroke.
feeling sad and isolated.
brush stroke.
meeting new friends.
brush stroke.
staying connected with old ones.
brush stroke.
finding friendship with the elderly of our community.
brush stroke.
building a business.
brush stroke.
having a baby.
Brushstroke.
moving houses.
brush stroke.
I could go on.
But life doesn’t always take one coat. sometimes it takes 6 coats of paint before it becomes complete before the new door can really take on its new look.
Sometimes it takes more than a few hours, days, or weeks to make it feel complete before it actually looks like it was what it was meant to be.
Sometimes it takes staring at the mess of it and deciding that today is the day that we add another coat or two.
Sometimes it takes it being a sad-looking thing before it can be made beautiful and bright.
Sometimes all we need is to stop thinking that the door will paint itself and rely on the painter to do the work in the time that it is MEANT to be done not when we wish it was.
And as much as I wish it hadn’t taken me 8 long months to paint my door, I don’t think that painting faster would’ve made it better it would’ve just fooled you into believing that the door was finished long before it was time.
I’d like to believe that the process of the hard things in life can take a slap of paint and be done. But my brain and body and soul and mind beg to differ. They beg me to take one more coat. To wait, to let it seep in and change me. Let another season pass through and offer another coat that adds more light and dares me to see myself differently long enough to see myself as strong and maybe even brave. That even though my life looks much different than I ever imagined it is exactly the way it should be. When I wish that there were more layers and time could be pressed into fast forward for me to feel only the happy moments of life, I am struck by the stark reminder that oftentimes the happiest moments are birthed from stroking the paintbrush day by day on the darkest moments.
As I painted I kept thinking to myself, maybe this thing needs one more coat.
I asked my husband to stare at it more than he wanted to reassure me that it had enough.
But even with his reassurance, I am not sure I am convinced.
Maybe I will just wait eight more months and see.