Yesterday was a busy day.  When God is leading your working day, His guidance allows for much to be done in a small amount of time.  I got to the post office before it closed and by 5:13 pm, all letters had been mailed.  Since discovering some new information the first of January, it had been placed in my heart to share the details of how a devastating event was hidden in plan view.  Preparing this for mailing was not a happy thing.  I had to deal with memories of people who had lied about something so serious that nothing could have prepared for me to see the lie as it was.  It had hurt someone I dearly love.  It was only possible to complete this task because of my personal relationship with Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  The rest of the evening was a quiet celebration of doing what God wanted done.  My sweet Bella and I were dozing in my recliner and we both decided to head off to bed.  Nestled into my pillows, sleep was easily found.  With sleep came the dream and with the dream, came understanding.

I was in a huge house.  There were several staircases winding down into the large front room.   All along the walls of the staircases, colorful artwork decorated the walls.  There was so much artwork that it seemed to be hung in every conceivable spot that could hold a painting.  It was plain to me that many artists had to live in this house.  I found myself overwhelmed by the fact that I had been invited to be a member of this group.  Many of the artists, male and female were standing about talking with one another and smiling.  There were servants to whom I smiled and said “Thank you” for one had brought me a cup of coffee.  It was pleasingly hot and the caramel color of the creamed coffee held the promise of being delicious.  I sipped it and it was just the way I liked it, sweet with a rich coffee aroma.

I was standing there in the large room drinking my coffee when I noticed that my fellow artists were all drinking tea from delicate china cups.  Each one of their cups was designed with a pencil thin fancy handle.  I looked down at my cup with its sturdy handle.  A beautiful china cup with blooming sweet peas of pink and lavender  and a golden butterfly.  My cup was unlike the cups being held by the other artists in the room.  Their cups were of delicate porcelain, a soft vanilla cream color.

I raised my cup to take another sip of my coffee but it had disappeared.  So had all the other artists.  I was in a different room, an art studio type of room.  As I looked around I saw that it was filled with what seemed to be a never-ending supply of containers of paint, all colors, all types.  Wooden panels, canvas covered frames, of all sizes and shapes were sitting around waiting to be painted.  Just waiting for paint from an artist’s hand to turn them into beauty.  It was an artist’s dream.

I heard whispers and smothered sounds of laughter but wasn’t sure where they were coming from.  Then I looked up.  This studio had a balcony area.  Above me, all around the room were those artists who had been standing with me in the large room.  They were standing in the balcony area, looking down and watching me, their cups of tea sitting on the balcony railing.  Whispers drifted down to me, whispers from smirking faces, their eyes watching me.

I turned to start working on my paintings .  Several palettes were lying about on tables and I selected colors from tubes of paint, some oils and others acrylic.  The individual mounds of acrylic paint looked creamy puddles of colored pudding.  My paints were ready for me to take brush in hand and begin the process of creating art.  The watchers above waited to see what I would do.  It was then that I noticed there were no paint brushes in the studio.  In vain I searched, for there were no brushes to be found. That was when I knew the reason that they were watching.  They wanted to enjoy my failure to be able to paint.   What I had thought was a friendship was only an engagement for entertainment.  They wanted to watch me fail.

I turned from them and discovered that behind me, lying on a big table was a large wooden panel.  It was mostly white but with several areas that looked to be painted with dark colors.  I walked over to it and placed my hand on it.  It was cool to my touch.  Someone had worked on this but then had abandoned it. It was lying there incomplete and not wanted.

Suddenly the door opened and in walked a man with one of the porcelain cups sealed about his lips and chin.  He walked up to me and popped the cup off of his face.  Around his mouth and part of his chin was a bright red circle.  He said, ” Can you do this?”  I replied that, “Yes, I could do that but not with my cup for it was too big.  It won’t stick.”  He placed his cup in my hand and said “You just have to use what you have.”  As quickly as he had come in, he turned and left.  The artists watching from the balcony had not liked it when the man came into the studio.  They were angry that he had given me a porcelain cup just like theirs.

I knew then that I would never be part of their group.  I didn’t fit in and they would do all they could to make sure I would never fit in.  Walking back to the unfinished panel, I realized that I couldn’t leave until I finished painting it.  It had a right to be completed, to be beautiful, to find a home on the walls of that house.

I don’t know how I got back to the large room, the one with staircases coming down into it.  There, where all the beautiful paintings hung on the walls.  I was standing in front of those mocking and smirking artists who had been watching me from the balcony.  This time, their faces were angry and it was with clenched fists that they held their porcelain cups.  Their eyes were looking past me so I turned around.  There on the wall behind me was the panel that had been waiting to be finished.  Only now it flowed with colored flowers, baby blue skies with fluffy clouds and beautiful butterflies.  So beautiful!  I heard popping and the sounds of breaking china.  The fists that were clenching so tightly to the porcelain cups were breaking the handles away from their cups.  The broken cups were falling to the floor, shattering into pieces, as the people there, dropped their hands and walked away.  No longer critics of mine, they were just people, defeated by their own plan, leaving me alone with my beautiful painting.  I looked down at my hands, so paint-stained with colors used in the painting.   In my right hand were two paint brushes, one thick and one thin.  Handmade brushes, certainly made by an amateur.  I didn’t understand until I saw where, close to the handle, the brush hair was visible.  It was then that I realized the brushes had been made from my own hair.

The large room was empty now.  The floor was littered with broken bits of china cups and pieces of the handles.  I turned again to look at the picture, the glorious picture hanging in its place on the wall.  I touched it and I sensed that the sadness had gone.  No more would this picture ever be incomplete and unwanted.  It was beautiful.  It now belonged with the other paintings there in that huge house.

As I stood there, with my eyes closed, music was softly playing, a waltz, with a melody made for dancing. There was a little girl standing next to me.  I bent down and picked her up.  Holding her in my arms, we danced, twirling together, the little girl and I laughed and danced.  I woke up still dreaming of music and the little girl in my arms.  In my heart I knew that the little girl and I had done it.  She was part of me and together we had given that abandoned, half-finished painting what it had always wanted.  The realization of its dreams.  To be complete.

As I sip my morning coffee, sweet and caramel in color, with the aroma of fresh roasted brewed coffee teasing my brain cells, I feel complete.  God holds us in the palms of his hands.  To be complete is to be whole, to have no missing parts.  That is what God the Father, Christ Jesus, the Son and the Holy Spirit want us to have.  Truth allows for us to know His plan for our lives.  By truth, we are made whole and we live complete.