The Painful Color of Life

God of my pain,

Master Artist in this life,

Architect of my existence,

Would you open the eyes of others to the color here, even as you are opening mine?

I know you have to pry them open at times, and it hurts, like Eustace, dragon scales falling at Your searing touch. 

But gray is no way to live a life, and if they could just begin to see the vibrance blurring at the edges, they would know it too - that You're in the business of renaissance. You have a monopoly on new birth, beautiful birth. 

In You I'm alive, even thriving. I don't want to be dead in them. 

Pity is no sister to compassion.

My pain is something they cannot see, but my hope is also in something they cannot see. Could I be the window through which they see the color, like a kaleidoscope declaring Your glory?

But no, they drown in gray, and they try to hold me under too. They press in, and I shut them out. It's better if they see nothing, it's best if they don't even know whether they are seeing gray or color. It's best if they don't really see me. 

I can remain safe from pity this way. Their heads won't cock, their eyes won't half close as if trying to feel my color, but really just thanking their lucky stars that their own lives aren't quite so exciting. They won't wax eloquent about my resilience and the joyful attitude with which I resign to Your will. Because all this pain, all this color, means there are days that are red with rage or flaming orange with frustration. There are days that the color overwhelms, when gray really would be easier. And those are the days when pity is most painful. So, I hide the color away, all of it, good and bad. 

But there are some who press in even when I try to slam them out. They're the ones who know the color in their own pain and compare their hues with mine. They just want to say, "I've seen that one too!" They want to sit in my pools of red and orange some days and dance with me in my puddles of vibrant green and pale sky blue on others. 

Help me to learn to recognize these ones, the color outside my own, and open the door to this masterpiece-in-the-making. We can learn from each other's galleries. 

Mostly, we can together find comfort in color dripping from the brush end of the One who paints us all into corners sometimes. In You.

In the Name of the Artist,

Amen.