“When Things Don’t Work Out as Planned”

 

 

It is always a nice feeling of accomplishment when a project is finished, especially one that has taken several months to complete. My friend, Chelsea Rose Jabboori, and I had that feeling when the mobile of gourds and driftwood that we had been working on together was completed.

Prior to making the mobile, she and I met at our house occasionally to sketch, with time spent at the end of our get-togethers for prayer. The mobile idea began when I carried a bin of gourds upstairs from the basement one day and asked her if she’d like to help me paint some of them.

Those were special gourds, at least to me—grown in our garden in Springville over a couple of summers, dried, stored away and then hauled across the country to Michigan! They were too nice to throw out prior to the move. I had visions of transforming them into birdhouses, vases and other decorative items.

Chelsea Rose, a talented artist, looked over the gourds and arranged four of them in three rows on the dining room table with some pieces of driftwood in between. Her idea? A mobile!  She even found a small piece of wood to use as a perch underneath the opening in the largest gourd that had been intended for a birdhouse.

It sounded good to me, although I couldn’t see how we were going to assemble all of those separate pieces together into one hanging mobile. Before Chelsea Rose left that day, we took a picture of the way it was to be arranged to help us remember at our next meeting. 

 A month later, we picked up where we had left off. There was enough time that afternoon to put the first coat of acrylic paint on the gourds using tones of brown, yellow, green and orange, and bright blue for the perch. Every birdhouse needs an occupant and since the mobile was designed to hang indoors, she picked out a colorful bird from a bag of assorted craft items to glue onto the perch.

During another free block of time, I found my gourd saw and drill packed away in the basement. After struggling to remember how to use them, I was finally able to cut a small hole in the birdhouse gourd for the blue perch.

 Chelsea Rose painted flowers, lady bugs and vines on the three smaller ones while I drilled holes in places where they might be needed for hanging the gourds on the driftwood.  Before our time together ran out, the bottom of the largest gourd was painted with an orange flower. The  assembling of the mobile would have to wait for another day though.

“You know, Chelsea Rose,” I said, “I think this mobile would be the perfect welcome gift for your new apartment!” It was her idea, after all!

The last stage of the project involved gluing the little bird onto its perch, inserting the perch into the birdhouse and gluing popcorn kernels in a flower design around the opening. Then  everything had to be strung together.

Fishing line was ideal because it was transparent, but how to put the line through the gourds and driftwood? Our son-in-law furnished the fishing line and Al drilled holes in the driftwood at my direction. The fishing line was threaded through a long needle to connect the gourds and pieces of driftwood.

            After trying a couple of different ways, we finally managed to assemble the mobile.  As she held up the completed project, Chelsea Rose said,

“Hey, it didn’t turn out the way we had planned, but it’s nice anyway!” and she carried it out to her car to take home to the new apartment.

 The finished mobile did look different from the original plan. But then, plans change, don’t they? And sometimes the process is the key, providing us opportunity to grow, to exercise a good attitude and yes, even to be thankful!

“I will extol the Lord at all times; his praise will continually be on my lips. My soul will boast in the Lord; let the afflicted hear and rejoice. Magnify the Lord with me; let us exalt his name together.” Psalm 34:1-3 NIV

“Reconfigurations”

 Gourds, driftwood,

kernels of popcorn

creative minds collaborating

reconfiguring nature

Voila! A mobile!

 

Surrendered

my heart, mind, soul

to God’s creative design

collaborating…

reconfiguring me!

JLL 8-10-22