Frenetic painting...

Saturday, I was reading Psalm 42 and tears began slipping down my cheeks.  Before I knew it, I was wailing and shaking from head to toe.  Amos, who had been snoozing on my feet, leapt up and started licking my face.  He kept wiping away my tears until I calmed down and then he crawled up on top of the upper part of my chest and put his paw on one side of my neck and tucked his head against mine on the other side.

As the deer pants for the water brooks,
So my soul pants for Thee, O God.
My soul thirsts for God, for the living God;
When shall I come and appear before God?
My tears have been my food day and night,
While they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
These things I remember, and I pour out my soul within me.
For I used to go along with the throng and lead them in procession to the house of God,
With the voice of joy and thanksgiving, a multitude keeping festival.

Why are you in despair, O my soul?
And why have you become disturbed within me?
Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him
For the help of His presence.
O my God, my soul is in despair within me,
Therefore I remember Thee from the land of the Jordan,
And the peaks of Hermon, from Mount Mizar.
Deep calls to deep at he sound of Thy waterfalls;
All Thy breakers and Thy waves have rolled over me.
The Lord will command His lovingkindess in the day time;
And His song will be with me in the night,
A prayer to the God of my life.

I will say to God my rock, “Why hast Thou forgotten me?
Why do I go mourning because of the oppression of the enemy?”
As a shattering of my bones, my adversaries revile me,
While they say to me all day long, “Where is your God?”
And why have you become disturbed within me?
Hope in God, for I shall yet praise Him,
The help of my countenance, and my God.                   ~Psalm 42 (NASB 1977)

Why?

How?

What?

So many thousands of years ago.  In a prayer, no less.  Anguish.  Confusion.  Longing.  Knowing.  Wondering.  Even as it hurts to read something that so clearly demonstrates how intimately God knows His creation, another way to describe the Psalter struck me:  It covers the gamut of the human condition.

Seriously, think about Psalm 137.  It still boggles my mind that I have heard and read Lutheran pastors who believe not all psalms are "appropriate" to read/pray in church.  

By the rivers of Babylon,
There we sat down and wept,
When we remembered Zion.
Upon the willows in the midst of it
We hung our harps.
For there our captors demanded of us songs,
And our tormentors mirth, saying,
“Sing us one of the songs of Zion.”

How can we sing the LORD's song
In a foreign land?

If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
May my right hand forget her skill.
May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
If I do not remember you,
If I do not exalt Jerusalem
Above my chief joy.

Remember, O LORD, against the sons of Edom
The day of Jerusalem,
Who said, “Raze it, raze it
To its very foundation.”
O daughter of Babylon, you devastated one,
How blessed will be the one who repays you
With the recompense with which you have repaid us.
How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones
Against the rock.
          ~Psalm 137 (NASB 1977)

So, since then, no one has been sent to captivity in Babylon, but many of us have been captives, both literally and figuratively.  Plus, this shows human emotion and human thoughts, the flesh that resides within us alongside the new creation, justified, whole, and perfect.  Here?, the psalmist ask. Here!  How in the world can I praise You in this bloody place?  Enemies wishing me ill ... well, I wish them ill, too!  I long for vengeance against my enemies, against the world in which my home is lost and I am left a foreigner.  I also long to remember You, what You have done.  Even in this impossible place make it impossible for me to forget.  Saint and sinner together.  Life in a fallen world.  Brokenness abounds.  

God caused to be penned for mankind this prayer.  How then could it not be appropriate?  Because I understand it—after a fashion—I feel as if I am inappropriate.  Because even this Word of God I would gladly have fall in my ears, I think I must understand nothing about faith, about the Living Word, about the Triune God.

I fall apart reading Psalm 42 and wonder what's left for me.

Amos.  My beloved puppy dog has started marking all the places where we are, such as the legs of the GREEN chair, the back steps, the washing machine, the bench on the front porch, the tub.  The places where we sit together, spend time together.  I think that my level of upsettedness has thrown him in a despair of his own.  My little piglet is also thinner, which is better for his slightly chunky self except for the fact that my own distress is clearly stressing him.

That night, Saturday night, he climbed into the tub whilst I was taking a shower.  Somehow he knew the water on my face was mingled with tears.  Poor puppy dog.  He needs a puppy momma who is not so terrified, who won't wake him screaming many times a night, who can be all sensible with him.

And so, yesterday, I rose from my nightmares and painted for hours and hours ...

I made a mess ...

... but the dingy, dirty, scratched, and rather depressing stairwell is now all prettied up.

Strange how the Mellowed Ivory looks different in all the places where it is painted in the house.  Here, the GREENness is more prominent than anywhere else.

I turned around from admiring the second round of mudding on the patch when I noticed ... FOR THE FIRST TIME ... there were two full cracks on the other side of the wall!!  As you can see, one was more than 5 feet.  So, I put my mad mudding skills to work.

You can still see the dirty, dingy beige at the lower part of the stairs, but the stairwell is now nice and bright.  I was out of ceiling white, but since the ceiling is actually wood, I used the white from the garage.  I thought the gloss would be just fine in such a small space.  The trim, String of Pearls, matches the trim in the kitchen.

Today, I painted more, despite the fact that I have reached a new level of pain in my body ... especially my hands.

I went to work on the lower wall and the risers.  Needless to say, the bits beneath the stairs needed cleaning before I could paint there.  

The paint is still wet, so the colors are all a bit ... off ... but you can see that the heritage foundation GREEN of the laundry area (left over paint from the living room) and the Grove of the stairs and the hint of GREEN in the Mellowed Ivory all sort of work together.  You would, at least, if you were actually looking at it in person, rather than in my phone photos.  Isn't it interesting how the Mellowed Ivory looks different on the riser than it does on the wall on the other side of the steps??

I wish I could figure out a filter that will off-set the lighting.  You're going to just have to think darker and richer and deeper.  There is absolutely no Kelly Green aspect to the paint.  It is the same Grove GREEN paint from the garage entrance door.  It is staid and dignified, rather than young and sassy.

As you can see, I went ahead and painted the small section of the utility closet wall next to the stairs, but resisted the door and the frame where Firewood Man will ... eventually ... be working.

This door ... shames me as a homeowner.  But you know, if I paint it, it will get all marked up when being re-set and properly hung.  If I don't, Tim will leave nary a scratch on door, frame, or wall.  SIGH.

Anyway, 24-36 hours from 7:22 PM tonight, I can apply the second coat on the steps and be done with the tending of the long-neglected stairwell.  Maybe the sight of all that beautification will inspire  Firewood Man to take care of that door???

What am I supposed to do until then?

And then after??