The Paint Swatches I've Had Taped to the Kitchen Wall for Six Weeks
The Paint Swatches I've Had Taped to the Kitchen Wall for Six Weeks
There are eleven of them now, little cardstock rectangles in shades of white that all looked identical in the store and look completely different taped up next to my stove, where the morning light hits them one way and the evening light hits them another. I added the eleventh one last Tuesday because none of the first ten felt certain enough to commit to. My wife has stopped asking when we're painting. I think she already knows the honest answer is that I don't know, and I don't know why I don't know, which is its own small humiliation for a grown man standing in his own kitchen unable to choose a shade of white.
I have been sober nine years, and somewhere in that stretch I developed a reputation, mostly with myself, for being a decisive person. I quit drinking in a single conversation. What I have slowly had to admit this year is that the decisiveness I was proud of ran on a kind of recklessness that sobriety eventually burned off, and underneath it was a man who had never slowed down long enough to feel the actual weight of choosing wrong. Now I feel every ounce of it, on paint, and on whether to finally say yes to leading the small group at church that our pastor asked me about six weeks ago, the same six weeks the swatches have been on the wall. I have turned both decisions over so many times that turning them over has become a paralysis of its own, a third option I never meant to choose but am choosing anyway by default.
I used to think this kind of fatigue was only about having too many choices, the modern complaint about cereal aisles and streaming menus. Sitting with the small group question longer than I want to admit, I realized mine is not really about options. It is about trust. Every time I almost decide, I run the tape forward to the version where I am wrong, where I say yes to leading those men and fail them the way I have failed people before. I am not actually weighing paint. I am trying to guarantee an outcome before I will allow myself to move, and no amount of standing in that kitchen was ever going to produce one.
James writes to people exactly as stuck as I have been, and he does not tell them to think harder. "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him" (James 1:5, NKJV). Liberally, without reproach, meaning He does not sigh at the eleventh swatch the way I imagine He might. Solomon names the specific trap I keep falling back into, mistaking more analysis for more wisdom. "Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths" (Proverbs 3:5-6, NKJV). My own understanding is precisely what has had me frozen at that stove for six weeks. It was never built to carry the weight I keep handing it.
Isaiah promises something I have never once experienced from a paint chip, a voice that speaks after the decision is already in motion rather than before. "Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, 'This is the way, walk in it,' whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left" (Isaiah 30:21, NKJV). Behind you, not ahead of you lighting up a guaranteed path. David says it even more gently. "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye" (Psalm 32:8, NKJV). A guiding eye, not a signed contract, and that has never felt like enough to the part of me that wants the outcome insured before I'll risk the first step.
Here is where my own reasoning simply cannot do what I keep demanding of it. I can list every variable, imagine every version of being wrong, and still end up no closer to peace than when I started, because peace was never going to be manufactured by exhausting every possibility. Paul describes the only way I have ever actually gotten unstuck. "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God" (Romans 8:14, NKJV). Led, present tense, a Person doing the leading rather than a spreadsheet of outcomes I keep running in my head. This is what abiding in the Spirit gives that my own calculating never could, a willingness to move before the picture is fully clear, because the One leading can see what I can't. "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," says the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:8-9, NKJV).
I called my pastor back last night and told him yes, before I had fully resolved every fear about failing those men, because waiting for the fear to resolve was never actually the condition God set. The paint is still undecided, and tonight that feels like it matters a great deal less than it did six weeks ago. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which decision has you frozen in your own kitchen. He has a plan for you that He has already thought through completely, "thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope" (Jeremiah 29:11, NKJV), and He will never leave you standing there to work it out alone.
Scriptures used (NKJV): James 1:5; Proverbs 3:5-6; Isaiah 30:21; Psalm 32:8; Romans 8:14; Isaiah 55:8-9; Jeremiah 29:11.
There are eleven of them now, little cardstock rectangles in shades of white that all looked identical in the store and look completely different taped up next to my stove, where the morning light hits them one way and the evening light hits them another. I added the eleventh one last Tuesday because none of the first ten felt certain enough to commit to. My wife has stopped asking when we're painting. I think she already knows the honest answer is that I don't know, and I don't know why I don't know, which is its own small humiliation for a grown man standing in his own kitchen unable to choose a shade of white.
I have been sober nine years, and somewhere in that stretch I developed a reputation, mostly with myself, for being a decisive person. I quit drinking in a single conversation. What I have slowly had to admit this year is that the decisiveness I was proud of ran on a kind of recklessness that sobriety eventually burned off, and underneath it was a man who had never slowed down long enough to feel the actual weight of choosing wrong. Now I feel every ounce of it, on paint, and on whether to finally say yes to leading the small group at church that our pastor asked me about six weeks ago, the same six weeks the swatches have been on the wall. I have turned both decisions over so many times that turning them over has become a paralysis of its own, a third option I never meant to choose but am choosing anyway by default.
I used to think this kind of fatigue was only about having too many choices, the modern complaint about cereal aisles and streaming menus. Sitting with the small group question longer than I want to admit, I realized mine is not really about options. It is about trust. Every time I almost decide, I run the tape forward to the version where I am wrong, where I say yes to leading those men and fail them the way I have failed people before. I am not actually weighing paint. I am trying to guarantee an outcome before I will allow myself to move, and no amount of standing in that kitchen was ever going to produce one.
James writes to people exactly as stuck as I have been, and he does not tell them to think harder. "If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him" (James 1:5, NKJV). Liberally, without reproach, meaning He does not sigh at the eleventh swatch the way I imagine He might. Solomon names the specific trap I keep falling back into, mistaking more analysis for more wisdom. "Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths" (Proverbs 3:5-6, NKJV). My own understanding is precisely what has had me frozen at that stove for six weeks. It was never built to carry the weight I keep handing it.
Isaiah promises something I have never once experienced from a paint chip, a voice that speaks after the decision is already in motion rather than before. "Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, 'This is the way, walk in it,' whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left" (Isaiah 30:21, NKJV). Behind you, not ahead of you lighting up a guaranteed path. David says it even more gently. "I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye" (Psalm 32:8, NKJV). A guiding eye, not a signed contract, and that has never felt like enough to the part of me that wants the outcome insured before I'll risk the first step.
Here is where my own reasoning simply cannot do what I keep demanding of it. I can list every variable, imagine every version of being wrong, and still end up no closer to peace than when I started, because peace was never going to be manufactured by exhausting every possibility. Paul describes the only way I have ever actually gotten unstuck. "For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God" (Romans 8:14, NKJV). Led, present tense, a Person doing the leading rather than a spreadsheet of outcomes I keep running in my head. This is what abiding in the Spirit gives that my own calculating never could, a willingness to move before the picture is fully clear, because the One leading can see what I can't. "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," says the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:8-9, NKJV).
I called my pastor back last night and told him yes, before I had fully resolved every fear about failing those men, because waiting for the fear to resolve was never actually the condition God set. The paint is still undecided, and tonight that feels like it matters a great deal less than it did six weeks ago. God is alive tonight, and He already knows exactly which decision has you frozen in your own kitchen. He has a plan for you that He has already thought through completely, "thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope" (Jeremiah 29:11, NKJV), and He will never leave you standing there to work it out alone.
Scriptures used (NKJV): James 1:5; Proverbs 3:5-6; Isaiah 30:21; Psalm 32:8; Romans 8:14; Isaiah 55:8-9; Jeremiah 29:11.
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