At 13, I'd carry my mom's House Beautiful magazines into my bedroom, flip through the pages of highly-decorated, highly-priced living rooms, and then start rearranging my furniture.
If a page showed a couch beneath a window, I'd shove my bed under my own. If a bear skin rug angled in front of the couch, I'd place my own rag rug in front of my bed and my desk chair would go beside my door where the posh, gold tufted chair stood in the magazine room.
And then stepping back--in my imagination--my bedroom now resembled those sumptuous rooms from the magazines.
I had one awesome imagination back then.
I'm thinking you have to cling to your imagination or else it seeps away by drops as you age. Because all these years since, I've heard tons of people put-off until tomorrow what they could have had or experienced today.
People by the carload tell me: "Someday, when we can afford it, we're going to have a nice house. This one we live in now is a dump and isn't worth fixing-up."
--or--
"They just don't play great music on the radio like they used to and clothes today aren't as nice as they were when I was growing-up.Women don't wear aprons anymore and house architecture isn't what it once was and people just aren't what they were, either. The good old days are gone."
My whole life, I've tried to keep from rolling my eyes and shaking my head (or the whiners) when I hear others speaking like that.
Why? Because nearly always--with an imagination--you can create, find, discover or buy what you're missing,wanting or needing.
You can paint a room in a whole different color (or barter the job), rearrange your furniture in a whole other way and have what feels like an entire new space by next weekend.
You can order the music you love on cd's or listen to it on Sirius-type stations. If you think you can't afford satellite radio or tv (for all those old movies and tv series you miss, too), perhaps you can cut back in other areas which aren't nearly as pleasing to you. Or borrow cd's/dvd's from your town library or ask for subscriptions for your birthday or Christmas or trade music and dvd's with friends.
Thrift shops, yard sales sell vintage clothing as does Ebay. If no one else is wearing aprons, wear them anyway--and search online for others who still wear them, also.
Make some vintage friends while you're at all this.
Search for good news instead of bad, take free classes online and if your kids have all moved away and left you without grandkids? Become a Big Sister or Brother or befriend a neighborhood child.
Well, don't get me started.
We are not helpless. Usually what we are is overwhelmed by our paralyzing, it-must-be-done-one-certain-way thoughts.
If God lives inside us, always there is something we can change. He has better, customized ways of doing, seeing and being. What an imagination He has! And what matters to me is that I listen, everyday, for the new, creative thing He has in mind for me to try or do or imagine.
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Proverbs 29:18... "Where there is no vision, the people perish..."
"Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness."
Chinese Proverb
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