Kelly Jeanette Swift

Today is my birthday. My sixtieth birthday. Wow. Just wow.  When you are young you never think that you will get to this age. You have the thought that you have all the time in the world. Like the song from For King and Country says "Why are we spending time like someone is making more". I never thought that I would get to this age even though I knew some day I would God willing if the Rapture hadn't occurred yet. Isn't this a lovely full moon. The last full moon of 2023. So beautiful and bright. The kind of life I would like to have. Beautiful and Bright. The kind of light that no one could ignore (another FK&C reference). This past year went so quickly that it was gone before I could really get it all in.  So I am hoping that this next year will be better. I would love to look back on my sixty one birthday and see that I made a change in the world or at least to someone in this year. All this is by God's will alone of course.  

I was browsing the magazine racks at Barnes and Noble the other day looking at the Christmas issues and just wishing I could decorate my house like some of these, but then I thought maybe not. The houses decorated in the magazines are staged to look good. No kids or pets running around. Not real. Seriously, if someone tried to keep their houses clean and untouched like these houses it would drive them crazy (or make the families very unhappy with them.) And I admit that I was one of these people a long time ago. But then I couldn't enjoy the holidays. I think no one could. Too busy trying to be House Beautiful worthy. Homes are meant to be lived in and show it. Children running around. Pets running around. Smells of dinner cooking. Loud and wonderful. That's life. Not those pictures in a magazine.  

As a painter I do have times when a painting is just not going for me and I just give up on and do the gesso thing over it. Too bad we can't do that with some life issues. A relationship, a job, an obligation. Just white wash over it and start over. Or we would, as I tend to do, painstakingly, try to avoid places I like. Try to save them to use in the next painting. Try to save life moments we want to keep and remember. Would white washing over bad choices, bad memories, bad events in our lives be fair to us as human beings? Aren't we the sum of all our lives, those things-good and bad-that make up us? Something to think about.