Monday, December 20, 2010

Halo repair

I discovered a new (to me) artist this morning: Brian Kershisnik. His work is whimsical, symbolic, colorful and... it moves me. His painting "Halo Repair" (which you can see here) in particular spoke to me, as I was sitting at the computer in my pink sock monkey slippers and blue waffle-weave bathrobe, getting a lazy start to my first day off from teaching home school.

It said, "This is what you need to do with the next two weeks."

Let's face it: my halo is tarnished, it hangs off center, and some mornings I forget to even take it out of my sock drawer and put it on. I've been running so fast over the last few months with school (while trying to squeeze in everything else), I haven't really stopped to refuel and now I'm down to fumes--oh, and I've been doing all that while trying to emerge from a lingering haze of grief which has only recently begun to lift.

My full but unglamorous life will go on for the next two weeks. I will continue washing and folding laundry, cleaning, cooking, changing diapers, mending, interceding in sibling disputes. For two golden weeks, however, I will have a few extra hours each day for reading the best books, searching words of scripture, writing a few new poems, and dusting off some old ones.

I plan to make the most of those hours, even if it happens to be while wearing my bathrobe.