My maiden name is Gray. I sign my name Tamara Gray Belanger, it’s on my driver’s license, my passport, my everything official. I have kept it as part of who I am as a whole. This week my students and I were talking about the process of building a house. We explored the foundation and how that applies to our lives having a kind of foundation that we are always building on. Foundations are poured out with unset cement the color of gray, ready to become solidified, supportive. It feels like a sure thing.

Life starts to happen as soon as we scream our way into it, whether we’re ready or not. I’ve often wondered what it feels like to be born. Something called hands pulls you out and up into something loud and bright and not at all comforting. You weren’t prepared, no way to gather your things; i.e. umbilical cord. I’ve experienced adopting two children, created and born in completely different countries. Each of them had heard a voice for months from inside their safe space and then birth happened and the familiar voice disappeared. The foundation shifted a bit and they each lived for more than a year in the outside world . Then suddenly, a stranger of a different color, different sounds coming out of my mouth, weirdly round eyes, walked in and picked them up and took them away from everything they thought they knew. Everything they thought they knew. Everything. It’s another birth all over again. And yet again, the foundation trembled.

Living can feel like the trees are sleeping for far too long in winter. You need that leaf to bud and you need it now. You take the hits and the losses. The people you love leave, or die, or disappoint and you can’t decide which is worse. The money stacks up but somehow it doesn’t make you feel like you thought it would or money runs out like water and now all you can think of is money. Change becomes the enemy just around the corner and you fear the sound of its’ feet heading your way. And then the thing you longed for, waited for, planned for happens and you forget the sound of those menacing footsteps. All the birds sing, all the flowers bloom and life is pure sunshine. Until it isn’t. It’s a fast motion fade and dawn and fade again, You think you see the foundation move and you struggle to find where to stand.

Take your flashlight and go outside in the dark. Point it to where your house rests. Do you see it? The foundation? It’s still there. There are cracks and it’s possible it has shifted, wildly or almost imperceptibly. But it remains and you almost want to hug your house. Good job, house, for remaining where they put you. Good work, foundation, for staying. For staying. But it’s gray.

The sun starts to come up and maybe you do a thing. You go to the shed, the garage, wherever you store the hammer and the nails, and you find a leftover can of paint. Hopefully it’s yellow or powdery blue, maybe it’s new leaf green or hopeful soft pink. Maybe you bring two colors with you. Get a small brush, because life is painted in small strokes, one. at. a. time. Go find a corner on the back of your house, somewhere where the aesthetic you’ve worked so hard to achieve is not “ruined”. Open the paint can and stir until it’s the color it was first created to be. Then dare to do it. Dip the brush in and put it on the gray foundation. It looks silly, childlike, completely out of place. Do it anyway. No one will see it….unless they go to the fartherest corner of your foundation and look for it.

As the sun rises full on it will dry the color and illuminate it. The rain will eventually come but it will be okay because the paint will be ready. It’s part of the foundation now. The foundation hasn’t changed. It’s just colorful now.

This is what I know. I have learned to take the Gray that I am and splash color all over the foundation that I stand on. And on rainy days when the sky weeps? I pull my audacious out of my pocket, bring an umbrella, and sling color everywhere. It turns out, when rain hits the colors they dissolve and blend into one another. Ah friends, don’t waste time. Live hard and out loud. Say I’m sorry. Say I love you. Cry openly when it’s sad. Cry openly when it’s beautiful. Risk safe for bold. Put your hands in paint and leave a colorful handprint when you hug your friends.

But first? Color your foundation and then trust it. My Foundation is my Creator. He made me Gray. He surprises me, confounds me, scares me sometimes. I’ve hidden from Him, run from Him, run to Him. I’ve shifted my own house and caused cracks to form. I’ve had my house shake, rattle and burn, literally, from life and it’s tricks. I’ve been sure it’s been one too many times to stand. But stand it does.

And colorful, it is. Jagged, imperfect, messy. But colorful. <3

I decided to write out the Bible in this next year by hand. I’d heard of a man who did that, not even a believer in God. If he could do it, so could I. so I started today. I realize it’s not January yet but I also realize how a promise made in the heat of inspiration in late December might not make it to fruition on January 1. Besides, starting the year feeling ahead can’t hurt.

Hand writing something is like being the driver of a car. When you are a passenger you don’t pay as close attention to how you get somewhere; but when you drive….you feel the twists and turns under your hands on the wheel. The words began to form on the page as I looped my pen around the letters made. “In the beginning, God….” How many times, I mused, must those words get read in any given January as so many people resolve to read the “good book”. And how many still, I further wondered, make it to the book of Numbers before they spin out and end up on the side of the road marked “Unsustainable”.

I chose the Chronological Bible in order to stave off the monotony of the whole book of Deuteronomy. There are a collection of varied passages from different parts of the Bible for each day and, depending on the order in which they occurred in real time, are grouped together for that days’ reading. As the words on my page mounted up, the words original seemed to add to themselves. Was I making any sort of progress? And then I got to the “animally” part where God made all the creatures and I read this sentence.  “And I have given every green plant as food for all the wild animals, the birds in the sky, and the small animals that scurry along the ground—”. He not only said it once but twice!……”the small animals that scurry“. All I could picture were those little folksy woodland animal prints I’ve seen on stationary, stickers and children’s books. I read it over several times and even when I’d made myself move on, I’d sneak back over the words and read it again. I was captivated that God made the small animals and put in the detail that they scurried. And, after the giant whales and massive behemoths with their impressive sight and sound all stomping and splashing, which must have been so fun to create, He threw in a few sprinkles of the scurried kind.

The way it was written sounded playful, God reaching down and scratching their little furry bellies, roughing up their hair with a little holy noogie. It’s really the first time I’d ever pictured God laughing. It’s not really a face I see but more of a warm light and airy breeze making the Aspen leaves clap together like a pleased audience. Earlier this week I turned to the woman sitting beside me in church going through a slap in the face rejection. “You know what the Bible says about you?” I asked her. “God will delight over you with joy, quiet you with His love and dance over you with joy and singing.” I can’t wait to tell her about the scurried sprinkles!

The more I pondered as I wrote out the words, the more I thought about the days that can be long, lonely, full of fear, paralyzed with pain, decisions to be made, ; when little woodland animals offer no answers, no bags of money or medicine. The thing is, He made them scurry. And saw that it was good. It says that about you also. He made you, took joy in that….and saw that it was good. He still does.

My hand grew tired, my head got swimmy but I said I would complete todays’ passage by 4 p.m. and so slog forward, I must. At 3:57, I put the period on the end of the last sentence for today’s passage…. and scurried off.

I got up early this morning, partly because I always do, partly because I had a cream cheese coffee cake to make at my sons’ request. I made it the first time after finding the recipe in a magazine I was reading while he took a nap in the little bed beside me. He was three months old, I was a new mom and this was our first Christmas together. It was a few years before Caleb wanted to try anything with cream cheese in it but eventually his taste changed, kids were added, and one coffee cake turned into two. I have made one (or two) ever since and now kids from afar are making their own. It’s funny how traditions sometimes happen accidentally; how they give cadence to how things play out year after year.

Years went by, the pattern repeated, the fabric sewn into a favorite menu with each person’s choice for a side, the grandparents on Christmas Eve, the wrapping paper picked up after opening dreams come true and fed to the fireplace, satisfied kids gone asleep happy, another Christmas rolled into the new year.

And then one year I found myself alone, a parenting plan to consider, the awkwardness of trying to form new “traditions” that I somehow knew would never really “take” the same. It would be different forever. I would learn the conscious choice of learning to be content in whatever circumstances I found myself in. It rubbed places raw in my heart sometimes. It grew new leaves in other places. And the Christmases rolled into new years, just as before. I was surprised to be breathing still, to be celebrating still, to feel joy in the middle of pain still.

This morning the car was carrying chosen presents. I was heading down the road, the same path my parents used to take to us, to the same old farmhouse my son now owns, making a life for himself. It was still dark outside, the car seats creaking in the early morning chill, the neighbors houses still sleeping. There were just a few cars keeping company on the road. The day hadn’t been unwrapped yet. As the road rolled under me, Christmas music playing softly through the radio, I replayed the years over and a smiled settled inside of me, deeper than just on my face. My heart was at peace. My kids, in their various lives, had found joy of their own. I am proud of them for that. I am thankful to my Rescuer for making all things new, for giving me grace and a life I don’t deserve and didn’t see coming in the hardest places.

My grandson greeted me at the door, showing me all he’d received…so far….;my sons’ special person gave me a hug and words in a card that filled my eyes with happy tears and my nose with happy snot. My son had taken a broken wooden canister from my apartment and researched its history (1950’s Japanese!) , sanded it down and stained it and carefully repainted the design over the original. Nothing is more perfect to me than a gift like that. He invested time and enjoyed doing it for me.

I drove back home this afternoon, thinking about the years when Christmas felt like standing on tiptoe to breathe above the broken. I have found restoration and, as I sat the wooden box my son made new on my kitchen table, I took a deep breath. My lungs filled with air and I looked out the window above it. It’s a mighty fine Christmas. It’s a mighty fine life. <3