Water Heals Me
Painting has ebbed and flowed during different seasons over my entire life. In 2016 I decided to pursue painting more and invited a few of my dearest friends to join me in a painting class for my birthday. It was such fun to experience making art through the lens of each person. There were tremendous therapeutic benefits of painting through years of my late husband’s multiple health crises and eventual death. At first, I painted to distract myself from grief. I just toyed around a bit. I distracted myself with more supplies and fancier paints.
The moment I tried to use paint to actually express my grief, I couldn’t paint at all. I tried and tried to make myself paint, but I just couldn’t for a long time.
In the very early days of our relationship, Edwin (now my husband) said to me, “After you’ve had a year or more of rest and of being well-loved, and without all the worries of medical emergencies and the piles of bills – all the energy of keeping your business afloat, running your household, and keeping your husband alive and ALL that went with all of that….that energy is going to turn into something and I can’t wait to see what that will be.”
I fell in love and married Edwin, and moved to live with him in northern Michigan, about 1000 yards off Lake Michigan. I drive by the lake multiple times every day. I can’t go anywhere that I don’t have a wide-open view of the lake at some point along my commute, no matter the direction.
I’m constantly surprised at what the lake looks like. The color ranges of blues and grays are so beautiful, but the unexpected turquoise and emerald greens take my breath away. Sometimes angry looking, sometimes choppy with joy, and other times still glass. I’m shocked at how much the waves change the shoreline and the topography of the lake floor where I swim. The ice comes in quickly and I feel sure we’re locked in until spring, only for all the ice to blow out the next morning. Big car-sized chunks of ice! How does it change so much?
Living that close to such big water has changed me. It wasn’t until I decided to merely splash some paint and water around on little canvas boards that I started to realize all that water has taught me. The water changes and evolves so much over the course of a year. Each season of water gifted me a lesson. My life was finally quiet enough to notice. But it was through my series “Seasons of Water” that I was able to consciously grasp those lessons and it felt miraculous to be able to express those lessons.
Here we are, years later, and I think we know what that energy grew into–this life full of connection to nature, art, beauty, and love. I could have never orchestrated this for myself let alone, predict it. It is purely a Holy gift, a life that came through faith and living by the water.
