Interior Decorating

A couple of years ago, we had some water damage to the inside of our house. Most of the walls in our house were painted white. Since the walls had to be repainted after the repairs were made, the contractor expressed to me that maybe I would like to pick something other than white. Now I am not a decorator and it was not in the budget to hire an interior decorator. I began to bring home paint charts like the kind you can get at the paint store to hold them up to the walls to figure out what to paint. I then settled on some possible colors and bought a small can of paint to try out on the wall. Every color I painted looked awful. My husband usually doesn't notice what I do in the house unless I point it out to him. One of the colors I painted on the wall as a sample definitely caught his attention. He had a look of horror on his face and exclaimed, "That looks like someone threw-up egg salad all over our wall." "Where did you get that color?" This was about the fifth color I had tried. I wanted to just melt in the corner in tears and give up. I didn't know that now I had to become an interior decorator.

After I composed myself and had time to think, a thought gently came into my mind. I was looking out the back window of our home and admiring the beautiful woods behind our home. Suddenly it came to me to ask the color expert. Can you guess who that expert was? It is the expert who has put more colors together than any other. This expert has colored the trees with green leaves, but look closely at those leaves on a tree. They are not all one boring green. The color is so close but it does vary from leaf to leaf. The bark on a tree is not just one solid color but a blend of colors. Each plant has it's main color but the shades vary slightly and it is pleasant to look upon it. The grass, flowers, vines, trees all have different colors and different variations of colors yet put together they look like a color symphony.

I never thought to ask God to be my decorator. Since He has made the heavens and the earth, wouldn't it make sense to ask Him for help with my little project of a few walls? I stood in the house and told God how much I appreciated his colors and decorating sense and then asked Him to help me with my decorating. It came to my heart to go to a local quilting store (one of the largest in the state) and take along the elements of the room (sample of flooring, furniture upholstery, wood wall, etc.). I packed the samples into a zip-lock bag and headed to the store.

When I arrived at the store, I began to walk around holding the bag of materials from my living room up to different bolts of fabric. A quilting store sorts the fabric bolts according to color groups to better facilitate picking colors that match for a quilt. I asked God as I walked around, "Is it this one, God?" When I felt that I had a color range that would work, I then asked God to show me which sales person to ask for help.

I saw a lady behind one of the counters that I felt drawn to and I asked her if she could help me. I held up my bag of pieces from my living room and apologized that I did not want to waste her time on my project, but I needed help picking out a color for my living room. She smiled a wide smile at me and said she would be more than happy to help me. We went back over to the material and picked out a bolt of material that both of us felt looked well with the bag of materials that I had brought along. It looked so good that I decided to buy some of that material to make things like pillows and other items that I could put in the room as accent pieces.

As I was paying for the material, I asked the clerk if she knew of any good paint stores that would know how to match the colors in the material to a can of paint. Again, she smiled a wide smile and said, "My son works for a paint store here in town that you can take this material to and they are the best in town. They will get you the perfect match for that material." She then added that her father was a painter and her and her sister used to sit on the floor and play with the paint samples as a child. She said she really learned a lot about color and choices from her father.

I did what she directed me to do. I went to the paint store, showed them the material, and the man in the paint store pulled a paint sample out of his display and held it up to the material. It was a perfect match. I bought the paint and the contractor began to apply it to the wall. It looked perfect. Soon I was going from one room to another and picking colors. They all transition beautifully, people remark at how beautiful our little condominium looks; and when I look at those walls I am always reminded of the interior decorator of my home that didn't charge me a dime but gave me the best choice possible. Now, you might think that I am crazy, but how would you know unless you try for yourself????? If you go to God respectfully, acknowledge Him for what He is good at (in my case color choices, decorating) and tell Him that you appreciate His work and ask for help, He will answer you. Just be prepared to do what He directs. That's the hard part because sometimes you may feel like a fool in the middle of a paint store!

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