Chapter 12. In Which I Disappoint LeVar Burton

Back in the day when his show aired on PBS, I fell in love with Bob Ross.

I mean, mesmerized. I watched in starstruck awe as he painted, seemingly, just for me. My parent’s budget was tight in those days; there wasn’t much margin for children’s hobbies. Even so, they lovingly purchased an oil paint starter kit for me. 

My dad, in an act of engineering genius, constructed an easel out of a pair of rickety old crutches and scrap plywood. He cut a plexiglass palette for me, complete with thumbhole. Whenever Bob came on, I’d crank my crutch easel open in front of the television, and we’d paint together.

Episode after magical episode, Bob, with his soft voice and gentle chuckle, would lead me through the steps of priming the canvas. Once the canvas was prepped, Bob would load his brush with color. Then, my friends, he would paint. The camera would zoom in for a close-up, and you’d hear it: the scruffy tap, tap, tap of his brush on canvas.

That glorious, bristly sound is quite possibly the most gratifying sound ever produced by a human.

Was this auditory miracle merely a side effect? An unintentional off-shoot of low-budget filming?

What if, God forbid, someone on the editing team thought the sound of bristles was a distraction and scrubbed it? Or worse—overlayed those precious semi-silences with jazz flute? By the end of the episode, Bob still would have painted happy little clouds and trees, but without that brush-on-canvas vibration, something beautiful would have been lost.

Relative to the full scope of human history, my daily actions might be as cosmically insignificant as one of Bob’s brush strokes. However, just as his strokes merged to produce something uniquely Bob, so the humdrum moments of my life coalesce to forge something never before seen in the world.

No one else brings my same fingerprint into the world. No one can tell precisely the same story. My perspective is the only one like it in existence. This is not vanity or self-conceit. It’s creative variation on a scale that is mind-blowing in its magnitude.

Here, in the quotidian moments of my life, work is being done. Within the mundane, my soul is being primed, roughed in, blended, scraped off, and having the devil beaten out of it. As the shape of my soul emerges, it bears the divine fingerprint of the Creator, and is capable of offering the world a wholly new perspective on existence.

As a woman—especially a woman brought up in a conservative evangelical sub-culture—the predominant message was to be gentle and quiet. If you must speak, let it be like yoga music—meandering piano chords layered over sounds of rainfall and harmonious water fowl.

It’s pleasant to discover I am allowed to take up space. That I don’t have to apologize for the oxygen I’ve consumed. I am allowed to splash my vital hue upon the canvas of human history. More, I am called to use my perspective and voice; to bear witness to the Creator whose design I uniquely bear.

To acknowledge my singularity gives rise to a hefty sense of purpose. And where there’s a sense of purpose, my old nemesis, that vicious inner voice, isn’t far behind. In those quietly magical moments when I show up to add my happy little clouds to the canvas of life, she would love nothing better than to ruthlessly dub over masterpiece moments of soul bravery, originality, and authenticity.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in motherhood.

This was illustrated one summer day, a perfect afternoon, as I sat with a dear friend on her back deck. While we talked, the sunlight played over us, and my friend’s newborn nursed at her breast. Nearby, her toddler determinedly transferred water from one bucket to another. His clothes were soaked, dripping, but his delight was palpable. Farther afield in the shade-dappled yard, our older children squealed in the happy abandon of imaginative play.

Later that evening, my friend prepared a meal for us all. Her children eagerly gathered around her at the counter. Chubby little hands added vegetables to the salad, drizzled oil over potatoes wedges, and sprinkled pinches of salt when called for. The whole process was wildly inefficient, and I marveled at my friend, managing these energetic helpers with quiet grace. She didn’t shoo them away. She didn’t scold them for sneaking bites. She welcomed them into the creative process, and her children delighted in working alongside her.

The day had been nothing short of idyllic. It seemed to me that my friend was a bounteous cornucopia of womanly prosperity. Which is why I was completely blindsided when she confided she felt she was failing her children.

My heart sank. Dear God, if this woman—exemplar of gracious, intentional motherhood—is failing her children, humanity is doomed.

For the sake of countless mothers convinced of our shortcomings, how I wish we could perceive the truth as clearly as I saw it that day. My friend hadn’t failed her children. Her children were joyous little souls, radiant; luminous with the reflected glory of their mother’s love.

Nestled there in the beauty of that carefree summer day—in moments so small, so seemingly insignificant, so easily overlooked—was the vibration of stroke upon canvas. Imbued with the grace of a deeper magic, those moments bore the quiet holiness of a mother wielding her brush with unparalleled mastery.

I am a child of the Reading Rainbow generation. I can go twice as high. I can be anything. That particular message converged with Walt Disney’s ethos, “If you can dream it, you should do it.” In that tender place where childhood ideals are seeded, those two worldviews collided, lustily copulated, and gave birth to unholy, bastard offspring: the terrible, toxic urgency to be precisely everything to everyone.

My prize for believing all this rubbish is the honor of shlepping around a super-human load of expectations for myself. I expect to maintain my identity of successful career woman. But I also expect to be a nurturing stay-at-home mother. I expect myself to be a fiercely-independent feminist while also being a respectful, submissive wife. I expect myself to make time for my passions, my hobbies, and for self-care. At the same time, I must effortlessly prepare farm-to-table meals from organically-grown, sustainably-harvested ingredients, keep the budget trimmed to a thrifty minimum, fold a Kilimanjaro of clothes, bake cookies for that thing I signed up for, and defrost chicken for dinner. Oh, and don’t forget the expectation to be cheerfully content, emotionally-available, and voraciously sexual toward my husband when he walks in the door at the end of the day.

Turns out, I can’t be anything if I must be everything.

Sorry, LeVar, I’ve let you down.

It is an act of bravery to lift the strangling noose of expectations from my neck; to accept my finiteness; to shush the harrying voice which bids me be everything to everyone. It takes courage to cease the frenetic grind, and to offer myself exactly, and only, as I am. If I have eyes to see it, there is beauty to be made in the moments of soulful mundanity which make up my life. It is made with such commonplace materials as we mere mortals possess. Magic is still to be found in the humdrum moments of quiet faithfulness if we are fearless enough to linger there.