After almost twenty-five years of marriage, The Wife has once again surprised me, leaving me speechless. Now, some of you who know me may be wondering just how she did such a thing and whether she could tell you how to do it too. Well, you don’t have to ask her. I’ll tell you right now. Just give me a blank canvas, and I’ll be quiet for hours. And if you give me a ginormous blank canvas like The Wife did last weekend, I’ll be busy and quiet for months. Just how big is it? Before I answer, let’s look at just a few other times life offers you a blank canvas.

Each time you start a grade level or change to a new school, a blank canvas is placed before you. You can continue the painting you brought with you or start all over again. Discarding the familiar is scary, but some of my best paintings came from when I’ve thrown away the old, took a step back, reassessed, and then started fresh.

It’s exciting to apply for and get your first job. It’s also something else – a chance to paint on a new canvas. For each job in your working career, employers only know of you what you’ve shared on your resumé. The rest is a blank canvas. Now is the best time to improve on those paintings from the past.

Marriage and babies.

Even though you and your spouse may have known each other for years, marriage brings a lot of changes, and it brings something else – a blank canvas for you and yours to paint together. And with the birth of each baby, a new canvas also arrives. Over the next eighteen years, the changes will come so rapidly, I suggest setting aside the paintbrush and taking lots of pictures. 

There are many more times in life you can simply paint over and start again. I’ve repainted so many times I’ve lost count. So, is the ginormous canvas I’m about to start on the result of any of what I’ve just described? 

Nope.

Last Saturday, we had new windows installed on the front of our house. First, the dining room had to be cleared of everything – including all the photos on the walls. When the windows were finished and the workers had gone, The Wife stood in the dining room looking out the new picture window at our river birch in the front yard. “Why don’t you paint a mural of trees on the three walls?” Our dining room walls are now going to be the largest canvas I’ve ever painted. I’m truly touched that she has such confidence in my artistic abilities to entrust me with such an endeavor. Still, it’s not my most important canvas. That one I’ve started, painted over and started again many, many times, and it still isn’t finished even though I’ve been working on it over sixty years.

Life – the ultimate blank canvas. 

When a blank canvas comes your way, it’s up to you what to paint. If you don’t like the finished picture, then paint over it and start anew. At age sixty-six, I started a new painting just last year when I became a kindergarten paraprofessional. Hopefully you too live a healthy and long life with plenty of blank canvas yet to come. Choose your colors well, and you’ll be happy with the most unique and wonderful work of art in this entire world: 

You.