Yup! You heard it right! I painted my couch! The whole thing! I recently moved and, being that Shanon only
has two and a half years of school left, we had hoped to make our new pad as
cool as possible, doing all the decorative, girly things we had been pining to
do. But we are also firm believers in
sticking to a budget and doing things within our means so I sold my beautiful,
Chesterfield leather sofa and for half the amount purchased a 30 year old
Broyhill set that was covered in plastic; probably by some old lady whose grandbabies
knew that whenever they visited her, they would sweat on, and stick to, the
plastic. 
The set was a
very deep burgundy with ornate wood on the arms and was not what I would have
chosen had I not had this brilliant idea in my head that it could be
transformed. Transformed! Transformation - 1. a change or alteration, esp a radical one: 2.
the act of transforming or the state of being transformed. This would definitely be a radical change, one that would not
be an easy one.
After Mom’s brain
injury in 2004, she no longer had a choice about anything in her life. Being rendered an invalid with no ability to
even roll over, she did whatever the caretaker decided she would do, and the
options were limited being that she was wheelchair or bed bound. Though we did our best to give her the best
quality of life, often taking her to the mall, out to dinner, or even to the
boardwalk on the beach, most of her time was spent in front of the TV either in
bed or in the wheel chair. Mom was
vibrant, vivacious, and full of life and TV would have been her last choice of
how to spend her time. Being a part of
this was life altering for me because I realized that, if we are not growing
and changing – transforming - we are decompensating. There is no such thing as ‘stagnant’, as some
would like to believe. We can get stuck
in a rut, hit a brick wall, or find we’ve hit a dead end. When that happens, it’s like an electrical socket
that has energy running through it with no place to go therefore, it goes
haywire doing more damage than good.
For a
variety of reasons, that is how I was feeling on many levels for a few
years. As much as I
On a personal level, some of my
relationships were also at a stalemate, the point where we had gone as far as
we could take one another within the context of the relationship and current existence. Sometimes, we thwart another’s growth as much as they do ours. It doesn’t mean that either party is bad or
good, or wrong or right. But sometimes
we have to let good things and good people go, or readjust our circumstances,
in order to continue our own path of growth and transformation. This is not to say that every person or relationship is expendable; rather that sometimes
we have to part ways - temporarily or permanently - to remove the obstacles that
stand in the way of moving forward. When
we no longer have the ability to transform, it’s time to assess and adjust.
What is
most amazing about stepping out of the comfortable is that the floodgates open
and the needed resources and right people seem to magically appear. I have come to believe that there is a
natural principal at work that blocks these resources until we are ready to take
the necessary steps to sow a return of
investment for the energy invested in us by others in order to keep from wasting their generosity. I have been blessed and amazed at who and
what has shown up to walk this next leg of my journey with me. In a
strange way, like the poem, Footprints In
the Sand, both naturally and supernaturally,
it seems that we are being carried through this part.
 |
| The Chesterfield at Ken's house |
 |
| My transformed Living Room Set |
I will
miss my Chesterfield. It was a fun and
beautiful couch. But it has a job to do
for my good friend, Ken, to transform his home.
My new set has been altered, and it will transform mine.
