The Teal Wall
It’s been over eight years since I painted a room in my house, and it’s not because I was already in love with the existing color on the walls. Our home in Arizona had walls the color of sand, which matched the exterior of the house as well as the vast desert landscape around us. Our home in Mississippi had walls named “Agreeable Grey,” probably because they were so boringly neutral that they made you shrug in compliance as if to say, “Sure, that’s fine.” Agreeable Grey was completely colorless. It made me feel like I was in a doctor’s office, so sterile and cold. I’m not convinced the wall color didn’t have something to do with my husband’s depression in Mississippi, at least a small part, (maybe).
Khaki and grey are hard for me to embrace because I LOVE color. I don’t shy away from bold, in-your-face shades. To me, color is warm, joyful, and hospitable. I want to walk into my home and feel like I’m being given a cozy hug, wrapped in bursts of citrus orange, zesty yellow, cranberry red, and sapphire blue. I know farmhouse chic and fifty shades of white are all the rage right now, (Sorry Joanna Gaines. I love you. You’re a goddess and we don’t deserve you.), but if I had to choose between calm and subdued or bright and cheerful, I’d choose bright and cheerful any day of the week. That’s the difference between neutrals and colors for me.
I’ve withheld from throwing color on the walls of our home for eight years and it’s been torture. I’ve withheld because for eight years our future always felt so uncertain. Every twelve months we were reevaluating our situation, asking ourselves if God was calling us to move on or stay put. Every year I considered painting the rooms of our home, wanting so much to make them a true reflection of our family; lively and fun, vibrant and happy. But I didn’t want to customize our walls so much that I’d have to un-customize them when it came time to move. It seems silly in hindsight. Painting, while timely, is not exactly hard work. In fact, I find it sort of cathartic, (as long as I don’t worry so much about perfection). Still, I worried if I painted the walls I’d slip into a fall sense of security. As if painting the walls would mean we were putting down roots, and roots are painful to unearth when the time comes. Perhaps in the end it was self-preservation, not painting.
We walked through our new home in California two weeks ago for the first time. Guess what color the walls were? Grey. Grey as an overcast Seattle sky. I groaned. But then something unexpected happened; my husband looked at me and said, “Paint the walls.” I’ve waited eight years to hear those words.
“Do you really mean it?” I asked hopefully.
“Yes,” he affirmed. “It’s time. We’re home.”
Before he had a second to change his mind, I jetted to the paint store and stood before the glorious wall of swatches. It was mesmerizing. You’d think I would have been overwhelmed with all the options. Where to start?! But my eyes immediately gravitated toward the shades of deep blues and teals. Teal, the hue of the Bahamian waters, has been my favorite color for almost twenty years. Through four tiny apartments and four houses, teal has been the dominant color in my decorating. It serves as a bright foundation for all other complimenting colors, and a constant in my ever-changing world. No matter the season of life, teal has never failed to bring me joy. So while I’m still deciding on a palette for the entire house, it went without saying that teal is the color I would start with. I settled on an intense blue-green called “Gulfstream” and set to work painting my first accent wall in our family room. We spend the majority of our time there and I wanted it to greet us each day with potent pop of color. I only doubted myself for a moment, when I first pried open the paint can. I had a brief vision of a Smurf and wondered if I wasn’t making a huge mistake. But I quickly swallowed my fears and pressed on. An hour later I stood back and looked at the teal. It was so beautiful I could’ve cried. It’s not just that the color evokes such elation in me, but it’s what it represents. The teal wall means we’re established. We’re settled. We’re home.
This move to California has lightened our family’s spirit in more ways than one. We will always remember our time on the Gulf Coast with gratitude, but I’d be lying if I said any one of us misses it there. We are laughing more. We are shedding far fewer tears (none, to be exact). We are spending hours outside every single day. We are reconnecting with old friends and meeting new ones. We are staying up later and sleeping in longer. Each day we drive by the college where Zach and I met. Each day we drive by the place we had our first date. We’ve run into people who knew us way back when, before marriage and before kids, when we were still rookies in ministry and in life. We take our kids to our old stomping grounds, showing them our first little apartment, and our first house. The familiarity of this city offers us reassurance. The darkness of the season behind us makes the sunlight we’ve stepped into feel especially warm and sweet. God has brought our family full circle. We are basking in the warmth of His goodness and healing, stretching out our roots and immersing them deep in the rich soil beneath, praying they will flourish in this place we are calling home yet again. Our future here is so bright, I can feel it. The teal wall is just the beginning.