You know a wall is seriously thirsty when the first coat of Kilz (supposedly one coat coverage) is not white, but a paler shade of beige when you’re done. It’s covering my fingers better than it’s covering the walls.

This is going to take a while.

That 2 to 1 estimate on time is going to be more like 1 to 1. It took about 5 hours to cut in and put one coat of primer on the walls today. It will need two coats of primer. This is before I put down any color. Then I will need to do trim. And we do have that built in bookshelf.

I spent some time reflecting on the journey I’ve taken with painting in my life. I remember the first time I ever painted a room. I was about 17, maybe 18. I was a senior in highschool. One of my two best friends wanted help painting his bedroom. So he and I and another friend got together one Saturday and painted his bedroom. I don’t remember what color we painted it. I just remember that we did. I also seem to remember that we laughed an awful lot. And that perhaps we did not do a very good job. But we had a lot of fun. I also remember that I found speckles of paint on my contact lenses that evening. I’ve gotten together with other friends over the years to help them paint various rooms in their houses. Kitchens, bedrooms, livingrooms. In my world, painting is a community event. It’s sort of the barn raising of the 21st century. You make a party out of it and have fun.

When we first found our CLB they were involved in service worship for three months. They had taken three months to do service and see what God had in store for them. So we decided to walk along side them for that and see what happened. Much of what we did involved painting. We painted a community room. We painted bathrooms at the homeless shelter. We did a lot of cleaning too. But I remember the painting most of all.

Now I’m painting alone. Significantly, I’m painting my livingroom. It’s the room where many communal events from my CLB took place and where the most abusive act of all took place. The meeting in January where I was emotionally abused by my dearest friends happened in my livingroom. They all got to go home. I had to live in the place where I was abused. I thought about that today as I covered the walls with clean white paint.

I’m making the room new. I’m doing it alone. Something new is growing now. When I’m done, the room will be new. It won’t look the same. I think I will even change the furniture. I’m exorcising the ghosts who have walked the halls of my house for all these months.

New things will happen in my new livingroom. New community will happen there. God will come again to visit. He is giving me new dreams to dream. I think I might be able to look forward to that.