Handwriting on the Wall

I love words. I don't know whether you've already discerned that by virtue of my inability to shut up, but it's true. Language amazes me; the complexity of concepts we can convey by forming sounds or scrawling squiggles boggles the mind. I taught English for 5 years (long, long ago), and that process cemented once and for all my love affair with language.

So when evaluating the bareness of the walls of our home over the last few years, I've repeatedly thought about painting some kind of quote up there. Paralysis always set in, though, when I had to actually settle on what the words would be. I love too many writers.

I considered lots of options. Some of the frontrunners:

• C.S. Lewis times a billion. Most often "He is not a tame lion," or some manifestation thereof.
• "You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body." This quote, which I love, is widely attributed to C.S. Lewis, and I almost painted it on the wall and attributed it to him, but it apparently comes from Walter Miller, who is NOT C.S. Lewis on multiple levels. That was close. Still love the quote, though.
  
• The Emily Dickinson poem from which this blog takes its name.
• Excerpts from Shel Silverstein's stuff.
• Various lyrics from Nichole Nordeman ("Legacy," "Brave,"), Chris Rice ("Missing You," "Hallelujahs"), and Rich Mullins ("Land of my Sojourn," "I'll Carry On").
• Most of the other writers you'd expect from an English teacher, including Shakespeare, Dickens, Frost, Langston Hughes, Browning...you get the idea.

But I kept coming back to the realization that whatever I chose to write on the wall would sort of define our family. It's not like I'm going to bedeck every visible surface with verbage, so I pretty much get one shot at making a statement. And I kept thinking about Deuteronomy 6, where Israel is told to write God's commands on their doorposts of their houses and on their gates. If something's going to define me with any accuracy, it should probably be Scripture.

In the end I landed on Galatians 5:22-23. That's the passage where Paul lists the character qualities that are fruit of the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. I formatted the verses on a PowerPoint slide (after obsessing about fonts and ending up with Optima and Zapfino), projected it onto the wall via a borrowed VPU, traced the letters in pencil, and filled them in with a black paint pen. It took several hours over the course of two days. Here's how it looks now.



A few visitors have mistaken it for vinyl transfers, but close investigation reveals a host of small errors and bobbles. I kind of like that it isn't perfect. Fits the sentiment.

I chose this passage because it's about walking with the Holy Spirit...allowing Him to gently nudge, correct, direct, and empower us. I firmly believe that once you establish a relationship with Jesus, the whole rest of the journey is about walking in the Spirit. Every single struggle, each obstacle and difficulty, eventually boils back down to this discipline.
"What do you want me to do, Lord?"
"That. Right there."
"I can't do that."
"I know. Let me do it."
"Ok. I'll follow."

The wall pictured above is almost the first thing you see when you open our front door. It's the last thing I see when I scan the place for lights left on before I go. It bounds the pathway from the bedrooms and the kitchen to the living and dining areas, and it sits at the top of the stairs that lead down to the office, family room, and garage. I walk past it hundreds of times a day, I imagine. It is literally at the center of our home.

I hope that it will be just as firmly planted at the center of our lives. Trying to manifest these qualities in a lasting way on our own power inevitably leads to frustration and failure. (I speak from experience here.) My prayer, then, is that each member of our family would be yielded enough to the transforming work of the Holy Spirit in us that when people look at us, this is what they would see: Love. Joy. Peace. Patience. Kindness. Goodness. Faithfulness. Gentleness. Self-control. Not because we are so amazing--we are all five of us unbelievably selfish by nature--but because He is all of these things and He is replicating Himself in us.

Honestly, I fear that people will open the door to our home, read these verses, and raise a skeptical eyebrow at the incongruity between these words and our lives. But the resilient optimist in me (let's call it faith) hopes that they'll read and think, "Is that where they get it? I was wondering."

I may squeeze some C.S. Lewis or Dickinson in there yet. But this feels right.