The Gallery, the Symphony and Starting Over.

Photo credit: Leslie Ghag Photography

My house is a gallery. Maybe yours is one too? A lovingly curated gallery of half empty coffee cups, water bottles, lonely socks. My kids contribute to the curation of this gallery with Lego creations left in windowsills and backpacks left in the front entry way (not on the hooks, of course).  My house is also its very own symphony (very artistic this house is). The washing machine vibrates a bass line and there are tap shoes and cartwheels for percussion, the occasional soprano solo comes out of the bedrooms down the hall “THAT’S MINE!” and the constant harmony rings out in “I love yous” and “I’ll miss yous” and the occasional “PLEASE, please…listen.”

                Our whole lives are made up of these little moments in mosaic.  Most pieces beautifully fit together to make up the galleries and symphonies that fill our days. Each season of life bringing new pieces and new melodies and harmonies. Experience has taught me that there are some pieces that don’t always fit in with the rest of the gallery – or notes (even full verses and choruses, occasionally) that are sour – what do we do with these pieces? We can struggle and fight to make them fit (sometimes this works I think, when pieces break in just the right way and love smooths the cracked edges and a comfortable place is found, adding character and depth to your gallery and dynamic to the melody) We can remove the pieces, lovingly (or sometimes not so much…) take them from the gallery, scratch out the sour notes, fix the holes they left and white out the marks on the staff paper.  Sometimes though you end up in a place in life where you have to empty out the gallery almost completely…what do you do then? How do you fix that kind of upheaval?

                This is place I am so familiar with, and I wish I could tell you the right answer. I can tell you what I did when I found myself sitting in the pile of ashes where my gallery once stood – listening to discordant sounds that couldn’t even be called a song. I’d like to say that I picked myself up and dusted myself off and made art with the ashes, and maybe I did, eventually…But in an effort to be transparent- I will tell you I cried so many tears, I probably could have filled the ocean twice. I threw things, yelled (a lot. Y’all -  I am a passionate person) and I started running (oh, and I ate all. the. chocolate.) Call it part of the mourning process? Part of the growth process? I dunno. Eventually there comes a point, when you have cried all the tears, eaten all the chocolate, and run all the kilometres…then what do you do? (gosh, why doesn’t life come with an instruction manual and guaranteed outcomes? That would make me much happier.)

                Aside from, you know, the normal dance that is survival when you have tiny humans relying on you, what do you do?  In all honesty the day to day dance wasn’t always the easiest – It felt like dancing a dance I didn’t know the steps to, and couldn’t hear the music for. The change is so gradual it sneaks up on you - well it did to me. It was a left foot, right foot, forward and side of changing diapers and making meals and juggling finances and figuring out life as a single mom. One day it wasn’t quite such an unknown dance, I could hear little snippets of the song. I had pieces for my gallery – so different than I ever thought it would be – less socks on the living room floor and work boots in the entry, more coffee and Netflix. More silent beats and empty spaces on the wall when my littles are with their Dad. My gallery is filled and gaining more, I’ll tell you that. Daily there are notes added to my symphony, in conversations over text, and worship practices and inhaling paint fumes and drinking wine (perhaps we should open a window!?).

 So, I don’t really know how it happens, but I know that it does. That God hands you pieces and they fit, and you take steps to put your gallery back together again, you start to hear the symphony flow around you again. There are still empty spaces in my gallery for sure, and whole verses in my song I’d like to see written, but it happens. The gallery is waiting, the orchestra is playing the pieces already written and life is being lived. It could use a few less empty coffee cups though (I’m working on it, y’all).


xo- Courtney