The Art of Being Unfinished

What Does It Mean to Be a Kid at Heart? (Chaos, Color, Calm, Calling)

Maybe it begins in what we call chaos.
We only call it that because we do not yet see the order.
The brush does not ask for permission; it just moves.

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Chaos

Years ago, I painted this one—yellow pushing against red, blue trying to hold its ground.
It looked like disorder, but maybe it was dialogue.
When my children were little, they never called their spills “accidents.”
They called them “projects.”

The canvas waits. It already knows.

What if that’s closer to the truth?
Maybe what looks messy to us is still being spoken into meaning.
Creation never stopped—it’s still whispered into wet paint.

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Color

Henry’s storm came next—blue and brown and brave.
He used his fingers, not brushes. Brushes slow the bold.
He painted a boat, and later told me we were in it together.
“So we won’t be scared,” he said.

By the end, his shirt carried the same storm—courage worn close to the skin.

That was his theology—untrained, fearless, and truer than most sermons.
Kids do not argue with the storm.
They trust that someone bigger will wake up in the boat and hush the wind.
And when the storm passes, they do not analyze it.
They go find more paint. Or the lake. And begin again.

Sometimes I wonder when we stopped doing that,
when we decided trust was something to earn instead of something to offer.

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Calm

Then comes calm.
Blair Lake in early fall.
The mist rising like breath, trees holding their tongues.
A red flag on a small boat saying, “Here I am.”

No one speaks. The lake does.

This is where formation usually finds me—quiet mornings, a warm cup of coffee.
Sometimes the kids join—cocoa, honey tea, laughter still half-asleep.
They hold their mugs the way we do.
Not because it’s sacred,
but because they’re learning how to be.

Calm is not the absence of storm.
It is what happens when trust has roots.
When love no longer needs to prove itself.

And yet, even in the quiet, there’s a pulse—
like a red flag in still air—
something whispering: this is not the end.

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Calling

Maine, years ago.
One picnic table, the ocean breathing in and out, the smell of salt and boiled onions.
I could see the lighthouse from where we sat—steady and sure against the mist.
While waiting for my lobster to arrive on a paper plate,
I glanced down at the placemat and noticed the bright red claw printed there.
So I painted what I had—the real light on the horizon, the imagined claw before me.

The gulls argued overhead, the wind rearranged everything that wasn’t nailed down,
and I thought how delight and danger share the same shell.
Love saves, and it stings.

The mosquitoes arrived like monks at vespers, silent and devout,
copying prayers on my arms in small red script.
Wisconsin mosquitoes, I can handle.
My body knows that poison.
But Maine’s—those were foreign missionaries. Their gospel burned longer.

It struck me that maybe our souls are the same—
we grow tolerant of familiar wounds,
but the new ones remind us we’re still alive.

The claw clicks shut. The light keeps burning.

Years later I realized the painting was not about Maine.
It was about learning to let the unfamiliar sting open me again.
To love where I have no defenses.
To keep painting while the blood dries.

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To Be a Kid at Heart

So being a kid at heart is not about staying young—
it is about staying unfinished.
Letting God keep painting while the colors are still wet.

We are the finger painting—edges blurred, fingerprints everywhere,
not yet clear but already loved.

The Artist is not finished yet.

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“My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.” — John 15:12

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The Studio of Becoming

Chaos. Color. Calm. Calling.
Four corners of the same canvas.
You’re standing in the paint right now.
Don’t wipe it off too soon.

Even wet paint tells the truth of where the hand has been.
And the Artist—He hasn’t left the room.

Where are you in the canvas today—chaos, color, calm, or calling?
And can you trust the hand that still holds the brush?

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Tags:

#ChildlikeFaith #SpiritualFormation #ArtAndFaith #Parenthood #Becoming #ChaosToCalm #MaineStories #CreativeProcess #Trust #LoveInPractice #Forming20