Extravagant Waste
Your life and death remind me of my favorite art
Impasto paintings – acrylic slathered thick with a knife, not a brush
Three-dimensional and boldly stated
Weight and movement added with a heavy coat
A waste of paint?
No. A purposeful and defined expression
Those thickened scrapes create an effect unmatched by the smoothest brush strokes
The colors can be better mixed with the blobs of excess
Sometimes not fully cohesive at all but rather layer coated upon layer
Daubed in messy perfection across the canvas
Your passing has added depth of color to the paints used on the canvas of my life
The reds are richer, ever the speakers of my pain
Deeper blues and purples, the mouthpieces of my peace and rest
Brighter yellows and orange to tell of my mourning turned to dancing
And what an extravagant waste a life not lived truly is
Just like those paintings
God knits together precious lives whether lived out here on earth or not
His nature is to give, to create, to paint
I choose to look at you, Joshua, as a given and not a taken away
You’re now part of the heaven that spills into my realm for mere moments at a time
My pregnant belly carried those beautiful rays of hope and light for only four months
And now my empty arms and womb feel keenly a hope that will one day be satisfied
A reminder that the best is yet to come
Extravagant waste because the Creator never runs out of paint
Because He is more than willing to spill it all out for us
It’s not inappropriate lavishness to Him, but supremely purposeful
Joshua, you were not a misuse of art supplies
You were necessary for some part of me that has yet to understand
But I can trust your Father and mine
You didn’t live without meaning
Lord, don’t be stingy with Your colors as Your paint knife cuts into my life
Mix Your pigments with my blood and tears if You must
Make me a vibrant masterpiece
Chunks of stained acrylic and my heart strewn liberally across this canvas
Harmonizing with that extravagant flow of life from my Savior
Expensive. Precious.
This miscarrying of life cut from the same garment of sorrow He wore
Do I give up a drop or two of my essence?
Will this monument to You be graced with faint smears?
No, not my offer to the Master Artist
Let mine be thick with the pain of my grief, even as the splotches of the valleys of death are smoothed out
Into plains of lighthearted watercolors and colored pencils depicting seasons of my rejoicing
Not nearly as bold, but effortlessly blended with those rich hues of suffering
Extravagant waste spilled without thought of risk or cost
The same scent of spikenard spilled over those beloved feet on a night so long ago
Hebron Heights Academy 