Missing Brushstrokes

Tish is a true artist.

Her talent with pen, ink, and watercolors produces soft, whimsical illustrations that draw viewers into peaceful landscapes and cozy rooms. Her imaginative style also has the power to create enchanted visual settings for children’s story books, a profession in which she has found considerable success.

What makes her eye-catching career so remarkable is that it began with a perplexing project that she really didn’t want.

In the 90’s, Tish had heady aspirations of becoming a well-known artist who’s distinctive style would grace the colorful calendars, greeting cards, and embroidered pillows sold in every Hallmark Store in America. So like every struggling artist, she worked hard and hustled her portfolio to a myriad of greeting card and stationary companies, and to many well-known children’s book publishers.

But the only company that offered her work was an established Christian publisher that wanted her to illustrate a children’s Bible, a project that both mystified and exasperated her.

Tish explained all this to me over steaming mugs of chai tea on the sunny patio of a local coffee bistro. “I had zero knowledge of God,” she said.  “I couldn’t understand or believe in the resurrection of Jesus, and yet I was being asked to create illustrations of these scenes in a children’s Bible. The whole project overwhelmed me.”

Tish’s experiences with Christian people also dampened her interest in this assignment. “Most of the Christians I’d met presented me with a ‘believe or die’ mentality. They all seemed to have an agenda and, frankly, didn’t seem to care about the person in front of them.  How could I be successful at something that was so negative for me?”

But she was hungry to get her talents onto the canvas, so she took the job and got to work. As it turned out, The Nursery Bible became a beloved best seller, a book from which she still receives royalties, nearly thirty years later.

So I had to ask. “Did your experience sketching and painting all those scenes from the Bible influence your faith in any way?” Tish pondered this question for a moment.

“As I painted Jesus, I began to think about him, that he was a good and peaceful man. But I just couldn’t understand how his resurrection from the dead could’ve really happened. I felt accomplished and successful, but none of this success turned my heart towards God.”

Tish spent the next ten years building a client base that kept her busy illustrating scrapbook products, infant bedding, and books. Ironically, the only books she ever illustrated were from Christian publishers.

Shortly after publishing the children’s Bible, Tish struck up a friendship with a neighbor who expressed an enthusiastic faith in Jesus. “She and I talked a lot about God and Jesus,” Tish recalled. “She was fascinated that I illustrated the Bible and hadn’t become a believer. But she didn’t treat me like I was some kind of salvation project.”

I nodded and took a sip of tea. “Yeah—nobody wants to be a salvation project,” I said. “And no one wants to believe they’re in need of saving either. Especially when we think we’ve got everything under control.”

“Yeah, that changed in a big way for me after the twins came along.” Tish looked away, and blinked her soft brown eyes, like she was scanning scenes from deep inside her memories.

In her late-thirties, Tish and her husband Chris became parents of twin boys, an event that overjoyed and overwhelmed her. “Becoming a mother changed me. My ferocious love for my sons overpowered me. And I became exhausted. Chris and I got so desperate for help that when a local church offered a series on marriage, we went to a Sunday service to check it out. It was so different from the Catholic church that we were both raised in.”

Tish and Chris joined a seeker group and slowly her understanding of God became clearer. Tish studied books on the Christian faith, like Lee Strobel’s The Case for Christ.

“It seemed like God was checking the boxes on all my questions about him,” Tish said. She also pondered her powerful love for her young sons, a love that she would give her life for. The idea that this same force is what drove Jesus to sacrifice his life for hers began to take shape in her heart.

Within the context of love, everything made sense. God’s infinite love for her, a vague, blurry concept that she couldn’t understand before, took on a razor-sharp clarity, like an image that sharpens as you adjust the focusing knob on a pair of binoculars.

“And then I thought, ‘Have you always been with me God? Have you been pursuing me even though I never realized it?’ “ Tish smiled and shook her head in wonderment.

“I started remembering all the things that happened to me over the years. Like how God brought me a Christian therapist when I was down to 87 pounds and struggling to recover from anorexia. Like the loving Christian neighbor who is still my friend to this day. Like the Bible illustration project that I didn’t even want. It was like he had been dropping breadcrumbs for me to follow.”

Not long after Tish gave her heart to God, Zondervan Publishing reached out to her for additional illustrations for The Nursery Bible. “It was a totally different experience. I began praying before I even picked up a pencil. So much love, confidence and understanding flowed into my work. It was absolutely transformational!”[i]

Tish’s awakening to the undeniable truth of God’s love and his spiritual presence in her life sparks memories from my own journey of faith. Below is an excerpt from my memoir, She’s Still In There: Healing the Wounded Child Within, that describes this moment:

An emerging realization stirred my soul that spoke of a God more powerful and passionate than I ever imagined…A God whose fierce intention is to form relationships with his people that are richer, deeper, wilder, and more beautiful than anything we ourselves could create. Resolution of my many unanswered questions, like missing brushstrokes on an unfinished canvas, began to appear… (page 254)

Over the years, Tish’s relationship with God deepened as her understanding of his love for her filled her heart with a settled, peaceful confidence. She knows that if God could carefully shepherd her life when she wasn’t even aware of it, she can trust him to love and guide her the remainder of her days. “Jesus is fearless. He is never worried about the process you are undergoing on your journey towards finding him.”

The road that leads our souls to God isn’t always a straight line – it hopscotches around in ways that appear random and sometimes meaningless. Often the waypoints we encounter on our travels don’t appear to direct our hearts towards God at all. But that doesn’t mean we won’t find him at the end of our journey, just waiting for us, like he knew all along what our hearts needed to bring us home.

[i]See  https://www.zondervan.com/9780310704485/babys-first-bible/