GOD KNOWS THE EXACT SHADE OF BLUE

GOD KNOWS THE EXACT SHADE OF BLUE         Copyright Frances K. Van Mil       

                                                                                             

              “Wherever I hang my hat is home,” I had prattled to Jeb (name changed), volunteer co-ordinator of the Christian organization with which my husband and I were serving.  At the time of the conversation, we, at ages forty-five and fifty-four had just finished moving our two elementary-aged children and a U-haul fourteen hundred miles from our home province of Ontario to Manitoba to begin living and working on our second reserve as part of an agricultural development project.  Whatever could not be crammed into the U-haul had been given away or sold at a loss because of the time factor.  It seemed that we had been living that way for years.

              It’s unusual to hear a woman say that,” Jeb had replied.  “I might expect a man to say that, but a woman usually likes to feather her nest.”

              After the conversation with Jeb I had begun to feel dissatisfaction.  As I looked at the outdated orange shag rug, cheap second-hand tables and tacky lamps I had realized that nothing in the house reflected my taste or presence in the home.

              And hadn’t it always been that way?  I had married a widowed market gardener and moved into his old house which was scantily furnished to someone else’s taste.  When our wedding money was needed for other things,  I had folded up my decorating ideas and packed them away like winter woollens.

              I did not realize that I was packing away a very important part of me – a part that would pop up again many years later.

              After a huge financial setback in which we lost our house, we answered the Lord’s call to enter full-time Christian voluntary service.  From then on, we lived with our two young children in rented houses on reserves with whatever furnishings could be scrounged.

              Would I have missed a minute of it?  No!  What a joy it was to live among the native people as guests on the reserves and help with economic development.  It was an inexpressible privilege with its zany moments too.  I entered joyfully into each experience, not realizing, however, that a very important part of me was being suppressed.  I was feeling cheated of a woman’s normal preoccupation with “feathering her nest”.

              Now I was over fifty.  Our three-plus terms of voluntary service were officially over.  My husband and I lived with our two teenagers in subsidized housing in a Manitoba town near our second reserve, where we continued to relate to the native people on our own.  The dissatisfaction awakened in me by Jeb’s “feathering the nest” comment increased.  My life was more than half over.  Where was the colour?  Where was the beauty?  Where was the abundance?  The tasteful home for the family to enjoy?

              A memory from forty years earlier floated through my mind:

              “Frances, would you set the table, please?”

              “O.K., Mummy.”  Carefully, I took my favourite Wedgewood blue miniature china tea set from the doll house and placed it in its box.  Its colour, “sky-blue” I called it, never failed to make my heart skip a beat.  After repositioning the corner china cabinet, just like Mummy’s, I went downstairs to help her.

              How I loved beautiful things!  I enjoyed arranging flowers in tall vases and placing them on the sideboard and in the hall, dusting the shiny, dark tables with their reddish highlights, and peeking at Mummy’s best china stacked in the bottom of the cabinet. Her china was bright, light green as befitted a redhead, and lavishly splashed with gold.  It all spoke of abundance, joyful hospitality, beauty of surroundings and feminine satisfaction in home and family.  Some day I, too, would create a tasteful home for my family, but my china would be blue.

              What had happened to those childish expectations of abundance and beauty?  If God really gives us the desires of our heart, as He promises to do in Psalm 37:4 when we delight in Him, then where was the pretty blue china and the prosperity it represented?  Even more importantly, did God even care about that very real side of me?

              I believe it was God Himself Who allowed the issue to break open, in order to bring healing.  I began to learn that the reason was not God’s unwillingness or inability to give, but my inability to receive.  Low self-esteem, an unhealthy allegiance to poverty and a tendency to neglect my own needs resulted in a wrong concept of God and the gospel. This bargain-basement mentality was pervading the whole family.

              I was not aware of my tendency to put others first at the expense of my own needs until I came close to experiencing burnout.  Years of having to keep an alcoholic parent as calm as possible resulted in a mindset of “keep-everyone-happy-I’ll be O.K.”  Denial of my own very real needs led to a wrong concept of service both at home and on the field.  I had to learn that when we are told in the Scriptures to love others as we love ourselves a healthy self-respect is implied.

              Missionary and author Elisabeth Elliot refers to identification with the poor in her book “These Strange Ashes”.  She describes a missionary family whose house, black and mildewed, smacked of poverty, and whose children looked as ragged and uncared-for as those they had come to help.  Something seemed “askew” to Elliot.  Indeed, something is askew when we go beyond loving, defending and identifying with the poor to being sucked into the whirlpool of poverty ourselves.  We can help no one then.  I had to get free from the idea that the more we gave up, the more noble our service to God was.

              My friend Sally (name changed), one of the poorest women on our first reserve, received a silver tea set for her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary.  She proudly used it whenever anyone came to visit.  It stood grandly in a place of honour, in startling contrast to the poverty of the home.  Yet, when I was offered an ornate silver tea service belonging to my grandparents, I refused to take it, stating that it would be an inappropriate display of wealth while we lived on the reserve.  Why?  Identification with the poor was a mask which covered my own lack of self-worth.

              I had no idea that I was carrying all this baggage, nor that it was preventing me from receiving the things God wanted to give me, until the topic of china came up in conversation with a Christian counselor

              ‘Do you like china?” she asked.

              “I love it!” I replied and burst into tears.  While I considered china unimportant compared to other concerns, my counselor seemed to think it very important indeed.  She managed to convince me that since the native people have treasures, it would be all right for me to have some.  “God is going to embroider your life”, she said.

              For Christmas my counselor gave me a blue Wedgewood plate from her own home.  Placed on the wall, the plate became a symbol of hope.  Slowly I began to believe that God would provide the money, that it would be all right to spend it on blue china for myself, that He wanted to bring our family to a place of abundance.

              I began to look at china and furniture in the stores.  So long had I repressed my desires that I did not even know my own decorating taste.  Gradually, the Lord began to show me that I am a romantic at heart, my colours rose and blue, my style old-fashioned.

              God provided money through an inheritance.  One day, through God’s providence, I found myself at a strange mall.  The first thing I saw was a Royal Doulton store. That day I placed an order for twelve place settings with all the trimmings in Royal Albert ‘Moonlight Rose” – blue, frilly and old-fashioned.

              More inheritance money, along with increasing conviction that God wanted it spent this way, resulted in the purchase of living and dining room furniture.  The whole family began to be healed from its mindset of want.  I began to envision a home of our own – a home which we now have.

              God’s precious gift of china brought healing in several areas:

              We began to see the heart and mind of the King.  The God Who created the stars in extravagant beauty is lavish, more than a make-do God.  As He supplies berries and seeds in colourful beauty and abundance for the birds, so He provides generously for His children.

              Having to take a stand for myself to buy the china brought a healing of my personality.  at first, no one in my family understood why I spent so much money on something so impractical as china.  I felt Jesus wrapping arms of love around me as I did this new, unnatural thing.

The greatest blessing from the gift of china was a deepening of my love relationship with Jesus.  Only Jesus could have known about my childhood wish and fulfilled it at exactly the right time in my life to bring about needed healing.  Only the One Who made me and created colour could know the exact shade of blue I wanted. His saying “I love you, I understand you and care about your longstanding needs and heart’s yearnings” increased my love for Him.  His saying “You are worth it “ increased my own sense of self-worth.  As Mary of Bethany poured out expensive ointment on Jesus to cries of “Waste!”, Jesus poured out His best on me to the same cries.

              Some will misunderstand about the china.    They will think that the issue is material things, when it is relationship.  Some seek the granting of their heart’s desires without realizing that Jesus is our dearest heart’s desire.

Today, as I sip coffee from a delicate china cup sprayed with blue roses and trimmed with gold, and look at the dainty kitchen curtains in the exact shade of blue I loved as a child, I sense anew the truth of Psalm 139: 1-4 (NIV):

“O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.

You know when I sit and when I rise, you perceive my thoughts from afar.

You discern my going out and my lying down, you are familiar with all my ways.

Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely, O Lord.”

I have learned that God longs to lavish His love upon us, and to grant us the deepest longings of our heart, along with a shower of healing, to enrich our relationship with Him.