I have incredible self-control when it comes to buying things. You can take me shopping all day and I’ll stop and oooooo and ahhhh over all the things but ultimately decide I really don’t need any of the things and put them back and leave empty-handed. But I do have one weakness and it’s art prints. If you take me anywhere and there’s a table set up on the side of the street or a craft fair or even an Instagram ad for a print I simply can’t resist. Every time I bring a new print home my dad reminds me of all the others I haven’t even hung yet. I’ve been going through my house room by room organizing and purging and cleaning each room which started as preparation to put my house on the market. This week I made it to the kitchen and my kitchen table has been housing the prints I bought this year. You may wonder why I haven’t hung them. Part is pure laziness but the other part is I’ve lived in my house for almost 5 years and the walls are all bare. Most of my apartments aside from one I left the walls bare the whole time. I think walls that have things on them mean you’re staying. They mean you call this place home. They mean you’re settling in and most of the places I’ve been in the last 10 years I knew were temporary.
It’s a complicated story but I started building this house during a different life and didn’t move in until 6 months later when I had moved on to a new life. It’s always been a place I’m probably going to get rid of soon…for the last 5 years. So I don’t hang things because hanging things means I’m staying…staying in a story I don’t want…so I think about it and then I decide against it. I’m finding myself in a season of transition that’s lasting longer than anticipated. I want to know the answers, I want to move forward, I want to carry on with life, I want to be able to plan, to make progress but I can’t…because I don’t know where I’m going. I’m coming to the realization this season won’t be short. It isn’t a matter of weeks like I thought. It’s likely going to be months so maybe I should settle in.
So I spent a lot of time this week trying to hang things on the walls in my house. I first pulled out all my prints. I still can’t find the one of my hometown but it’ll pop up sooner or later. I want my house to be as interesting as my life has been. I put them all out on the kitchen table and snapped the picture above. I didn’t realize until I stood on a chair to take this picture that they are markers of all the place I’ve been since college. I have an entire room dedicated to Atlanta. Not a single print is of a person or material thing…they are a collection of my experiences in picture form.
I think walls that have things on them mean you’re staying. They mean you call this place home. They mean you’re settling in and most of the places I’ve been in the last 10 years I knew were temporary.
MOLLY INCLÁn
The safari animals I bought on a study abroad trip to Tanzania, Africa from a program that taught adolescent boys to paint to keep them out of mischief on the streets after school.
The watercolor is of the iconic building on my college campus that I bought off Etsy to go with my diploma. I ended up not framing it with my diploma.
The Georgia G was my grandfather’s. He will always be my favorite person who ever lived. He didn’t live to see me attend his alma mater for grad school but it’s something we share. It signifies a year in Athens, GA.
The row of buildings is from Puerto Rico from a Spring Break trip with my MBA friends. I bought it in San Juan from a man who set up shop on a square right before we were headed to the airport.
The large print of the Boston skyline is from a Bazaar in Brighton, MA that one of my best friends asked me to go to with her.
The print of the Green Line and the small Boston print I bought from Trident Booksellers on my last day in Boston with my friends.
Apparently I’ve been buying pictures of places that I love that are significant to me without even realizing it. Years are spaced in between the times I made these purchases. Little breadcrumbs of my life scattered throughout my house. I went to work trying to prepare them to be hung out of a practical need to get things off the table and not necessarily a conscious decision to make my house a home. Some prints are standard sizes and those are much easier…until you start taking into account the colors of the walls and the print and the frame options and colors. Then you have to figure out which space is the right place and size for your print. It’s quite an overwhelming process for someone who is weak when it comes to interior design skills and made me wonder why I decided we needed to hang things after all. I text my best friend pictures of all the options and let her pick and advise me.
Perhaps while I’ve been doubting God I’ve been surrounding myself with “monuments” of all the times he came through for me. When I started thinking about it, these pictures are pictures of answered prayers: to study abroad, to transfer schools, for a full-ride, to live in Boston, for life-long friends.
MOLLY INCLÁn
The first print I hung used command strips because I’m honestly afraid of how many holes in the wall it would take otherwise to get it just right and it saves the walls “for when I’m going to sell this place”. I read the instructions and part of the instructions require you to stick the pieces to the wall, then pull the frame off the wall for the “adhesive to build” for an hour, what that means exactly I have no idea but I assume that it strengthens the power of the command strip. I don’t understand the chemistry of it or why it can’t do that with the frame attached or why it isn’t strong enough off the bat or where this extra strength comes from but I’m not a chemist or an engineer so I’ll leave it to them to explain. I do know this morning I woke up and realized this is like my life. I’ve been stuck somewhere temporarily that might turn out to be for years, it feels like most things have been pulled away from me, I’m sitting for my hour (which is a lot longer than an hour) and the “adhesive is building”. This time is changing me and making me stronger. It is preparing me to carry heavy things, beautiful things, thing that make you smile when you pass them in the hallway. Things can be both strong and temporary.
My word of the year is commit…the end of the year is coming…I’m wondering how I’m going to look back and see that I put the word to good use. I haven’t been able to commit to anything long term but maybe that’s the lesson…maybe we don’t have to commit to answers…maybe we commit to the questions…maybe we commit to knowing this season is lasting longer than expected and that calls us to frame pictures and hang them on the walls as reminders of the past while we wait on what is to come. This entire time I’ve been thinking I’m decorating a temporary space out of boredom on the days my mind just can’t be productive in front of a computer I turn to doing things with my hands like cleaning and organizing and hanging prints but today it dawned on me…perhaps I’m decorating a house that I will stay in for years, perhaps I’m preparing a place that seems without purpose for a purpose that is about to be delivered, perhaps this is an exercise of faith, perhaps the best is yet to come. Perhaps while I’ve been doubting God I’ve been surrounding myself with “monuments” of all the times he came through for me. When I started thinking about it, these pictures are pictures of answered prayers: to study abroad, to transfer schools, for a full-ride, to live in Boston, for life-long friends. My house has never been closer to looking or feeling like a home and the irony is I did it all with the intent of leaving. It reminds me of a little kid who you trick into doing what you want them to do in the first place. When you challenge them to a competition of who can pick up the toys the fastest and they think they beat you but they did exactly what you wanted them to do. That was me angrily cleaning my house room by room, doubting God would show up for me, all the while putting reminders of the power of his faithfulness all over my house so I will see them every day every where I turn and I didn’t even notice until today. God is faithful no matter how stubborn I may be.