I’m going to miss painting this thing. Miss it because it reminds me that I am vulnerable, feeble, I am doing this because I have no context to make art but desperately want to so I am attempting to while I am stuck in these 300 days or rather stuck in a season of much instability. It reminds me of this journey that I am on and the things I have learned and unlearned and that from that I’ve built a kind of stability. I will miss it because it has become a source of comfort. When I am done with these 300 days, I have a slight fear of “what will come next?” I hope and planned and expected that answering that question would be easier somehow…but it might not be. I made a book chronicling the journey of this object in these 300 days. Looking through the book (and seeing that there even is a book from this project I began on such a whim), reading my words, seeing the pictures of where it has been, what it was before compared to what it is now and the discussions I have had about it with so many people…it still astounds me how far it has come. It was trivial, and nothing more, but it has been built into something more and grown into something beyond itself. Yet this chapter is ending, and the next one is about to begin. There is a “next.” There always is, but we rarely know what that is. Even the best intentions, preparations, and plans can falter and put us back at square one. I think we all can relate to this in some way. However, even in the planning whether it prospers or not, there is a purpose. I guess this is where hope comes in. Even if we can’t see the “next”, we can still somehow hope in it, hope for it, look and anticipate that there will be a “next” and whatever it is, it will be good and meaningful. I often find myself coming back to these words from scripture “…But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.” Acts 20:24-25