Brown Paint and Refrigerators

Phaeton, Haiti

Many years ago my mom was opening up several Curves for Women clubs and she wanted to do some murals on the walls to spice up the place.  So we did some caricatures of women exercising.  Given that I was an art major and loved anything to do with painting, she asked me to help.

We used an overhead projector (yes, I just said overhead projector) to reflect the images on the wall and I traced around the edges of the design and later painted it in.  All was going well until we got to painting the women's hair color.  I could paint every shade of blonde or red or black or gray but I absolutely could not mix the right color to make brown.  Being a painting major at the time, I was incredibly frustrated at the fact that I couldn't make that darn brown paint.  I may have even thrown a little bit of a temper tantrum too.

My mom and I decided to take a break and go out for lunch and I expressed my frustration with the brown paint, to which she replied, "Well, did you pray about it?"  "Mom, God doesn't care about brown paint." "Well, why don't you try and see."  So in my most snotty, attitude-y, teenage voice I prayed, "Dear God, I need to make brown paint.  Amen."  I'm sure I rolled my eyes and crossed my arms and stared out the window at the sheer ridiculousness of the conversation I had just had with the "Almighty Deity" about a bit of tinted media.

After lunch we returned to the club and I took out my paint brush, grabbed some paint colors and just threw them in there fully expecting a disgusting color of blah to be revealed.  But within seconds, the most beautiful Auburn color that any woman would die to achieve showed up in my little Dixie cup.  I couldn't believe it.  I didn't even try.  I completely expected there to be no brunette gym bunnies on my mother's club walls.  But there it was; brown paint.

Although I wasn't a Believer back then, I never forgot that brown paint.  For many years after, when I had become a Believer, I caught myself in the most trying of circumstances quietly saying to myself, "brown paint."  I fully expected that no matter how impossible something seemed, if God cared that I could make brown paint He certainly cared enough to walk me through anything with more serious ramifications.

Monday, my refrigerator stopped working.  Of course something like this would happen when my husband is out of town.  Of course this would happen when I just went to the grocery store and bought a month's worth of meat to freeze.  Of course this would happen when I live in a Spanish-speaking country where I don't know the technical way to say "the external temperature control" or could possibly not know the technical terms they would throw back at me if I called someone asking for help.  So after panicking for a little bit and then calling the manufacturer (which wasn't as traumatic as I thought it would be) the words "brown paint" came to my mind.  I hadn't thought of the phrase in quite a long time so I paid special attention to the fact that it resurfaced in my desperate time of need...and I use desperate loosely, of course. 

I walked over to my refrigerator, put both hands on it and said something to the effects of, "Lord, I hate that my husband is not here to take care of this.  I just want to sit on my couch and drown my sorrows away in chocolate but I am choosing to actively seek You.  I know that You are the God who controls the wind and the waves, the sun and the moon and you even probably control the electricity somehow.  I need this refrigerator and really don't have the energy to jump through the hoops I will have to jump through to get this fixed.  Please fix my refrigerator."  In the exact moment that I said "Amen" I felt the urge to unplug my fridge.  I thought it kind of odd considering that would seemingly be counter-productive but I have learned to pay special attention to things, and thoughts, that are out of the ordinary.  I walked over, unplugged my fridge, plugged it back in and instantly heard the glorious sound of the temperature fan kicking in.  All the lights came back on and cool air was flowing through my perspiring food.

Some may call that coincidence.  Some may call that my own intellectual knowledge of a working refrigerator.  I prefer to call that an Infinite and Mighty God who takes small moments everyday to remind us of how Intimate and Loving He really is.  Our God who paints the colors of a Haitian sunrise the most majestic colors of red, orange and yellow also whispers to our souls His unbelievable love for us through brown paint and refrigerators.