The Colors of Joy

Adeline, a little girl raised in a world of dingy grey somehow, learned to dream in color. She was a talented child of limited privilege but gifted with creativity. Her talent to dream beyond her environment was her ticket to survival. Trapped in a home characterized by spiritual, intellectual, and economic poverty, Adeline escaped into the inner, colorful world of her dreams. That special place was the opposite of the deadly vacuum in which she lived and breathed. Adeline’s world was made of vast, rolling, emerald-green hills beneath an azure sky filled with cloudless rainbows. The sun was always shinning but never too hot, it gently, kissed and nurtured flowers reflecting the color of the rainbows above them, in the sparkling sky. Every animal on the planet that Adeline created in her mind was a pet, even bears and lions and the people were always loving and kind. Everything was wonderful in the dream-world of Adeline’s imagination and she spent as much of her time as possible there. Every book she read, every movie she watched was like a seed that upon germination, added depth and detail to her inner world. To Adeline, reality became just a bad dream and the better world within, her reality. Adeline found happiness in the colorful, loving, joyful world she imagined but her fantasy didn’t have the power to change her reality. Then something happened to turn Adeline and her desire to create goodness and beauty changed; she became creatively evil.

A man, all dingy, dank grey, with an empty soul, filled with alcohol, destroyed Adeline’s personal dignity before she even understood it as her right. Adeline became an “anybody’s” and a “nobody” by a process of degradation she was too young to comprehend. What she did understand was that if she pleased him, he wouldn’t hit her, and he even gave her things. In a world of dingy grey, survival and getting things is everything. Adeline wanted to live because all little girls want to live but the colorful world within her died, in the face of evil’s revelation. Forced by the cruelty of harsh reality into understanding her dream world could never be, Adeline turned all her creative powers over to the darkness. She became adept at pleasing by pretending to be what others wanted and then taking whatever she could clean from them. Sometimes though, her soul still screamed for relief and she found the escape she craved but no longer had the childlike faith to create, in drugs. A puff, a pill, a sniff, and finally, an injection artificially inflated Adeline’s dreams. However, they lacked the power to breathe life into her deadened soul that was now also, dingy grey. Adeline had no access to the joy she knew as a child and as the popular saying goes, when she grew up, she was a completed product of her environment. Sweet, beautiful, little Adeline didn’t make it into the world of human beings and by them, was regarded as only, a statistic.

Thankfully, statistics are another form of fantasy and no statistic can rightly define a human being. Adeline, no matter her environment or the choices she made to survive it, was a child of God. Her gift of creativity was her Godly attribute, a reflection of the Father who made her and adored her, even in her grey, lifeless state. Though the world labeled her as ”a nobody” who gave herself to anybody, God saw her as His precious daughter and He sent His Son, Jesus to save her from her sin and heal her from everything that damaged her. Though she appeared to be broken, useless, only garbage, through Jesus, God reached down whispering, “I love you. I bled and died for you and if you believe in Me, you will be free. I am living now and if you take my hand, you will live a new life in me.” Adeline recognized this voice that didn’t come from without but from within, as she reached for that hand that her physical eyes couldn’t see, and immediately, felt the wrapping of the warmest most comforting embrace she’d ever known. It was her Daddy, come to rescue her, and heal all of her wounds.

Because of Jesus, Adeline’s story didn’t end in a sad statistic and she found a sure escape from a dingy grey world of poverty, crime, and degradation. Adeline lived a life beyond mere survival. In Christ, she grew to overcome everything her childhood seemed to predestine for her. She wasn’t limited by her life’s circumstances because from before the foundation of the world, God had a better plan. Adeline became a wife, mother, teacher, and a painter who filled her corner of the world with every color of the rainbow. Every painting shone with a brilliant light empowered to bend every sorrowful shade of grey and disperse throughout: red for Christ’s blood, blue for peace, green for life, and yellow for joy. Adeline’s creativity found a new purpose, that of glorifying her Father. Adeline, that sad little girl trapped in a dingy world who managed to survive by the seed God planted of Himself within her, lived a life better than her dreams when she recognized the giver of dreams, as her Heavenly Father. Now, she belongs to only, Him. She is a daughter of the King! She still dreams of a better world but that world isn’t a fantasy. It is Christ’s Kingdom to come that her childhood dreams were but a taste of. In that world, there will be no sad little girls who must survive and then overcome a dingy world of grey.

34 thoughts on “The Colors of Joy

    1. I count it as a blessing that my pride was destroyed early and I was prepared to accept Him at the threshold of my adult years. In Christ even that which appears to be only, a curse serves His purpose. I’m thankful that God sits above and directs the good and evil in my life. I’m thankful that I belong to Jesus.

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      1. Sometimes with art, we have to lay a piece aside, live some more, then pick it back up, and then it completes itself. I wish I could paint but I can’t right now so, I think about color and I write. Truth be known, I think I’m a better writer than painter. I think every artist is frustrated in being able to fully achieve what we reach for. You have amazing talent. Don’t give up.:0) I’m not a smoke-blower so, I’m not just puffing you up. I look forward to reading what you write.


      1. You are welcome Pam. There’s so many broken desperate people in the world, and to see another broken person made whole…that’s powerful stuff. Somebody might see this story and it be just what they need to see that Jesus makes things right.

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  1. In years gone by… I had fallen down that rabbit hole… where I met a delightful young lady named Alice… she and her friend, I believe her name was Adeline… stirred my mind into thoughts of the un-ordinary. With time… and inspiration from those who had not realized their influence upon our souls… we began to wander away from all that had lured us into what we thought was wonderland… but was instead… a path that lead us only into darkness. We soon found the ‘light’… the light from a single candle that had been lit by a soul who understood… understanding what had led us into the darkness to begin with… a compassionate soul of reason… of love… and we followed that light of a single candle… until we found our own corner of the world… filled with every color of the rainbow… and we became the artists… the poets… the writers… of love… and of life… and now… “we” can light that single candle… that so beautifully shines a light within the darkness… for one who has wandered from their pathway of light… Thank you for lighting that candle…

    And thank you for allowing me to take up so much space in your comments…

    This is a most beautiful story Pam… Thank you for sharing it with us…


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    1. I’m so thankful for that light that shines in darkness, that the dark can’t consume, that leads all who embrace it out of the dark night of the soul. Only Jesus obeyed God so perfectly as to be God on earth. The rest of us wander and are dependent upon the light to save us. You have as much space in my comments as you want or need. Your words are so beautiful they make me cry.


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