Painting changes things...

My wife and I started repainting the interior of our home two weeks ago. We have taken a few hours each evening after the kids are in bed to work on our living room. It is going much slower than my wife would like but slowly but surely we are making progress.

Before we painted, the walls were a medium brown color (my wife would give it a specific name, but to me colors are light, medium, and dark). Standing in our living room you can see into the kitchen, into a hallway that goes to two of our kids’ rooms, and into our kids’ bathroom. Standing in the living room, the hallway and bathroom was a nice light brown (or tan-ish) color, our kitchen was a light green, and our front door was an off white color.

That is until we put the light brown color on the living room walls. The new color changed the look of the other colors. The kitchen stayed green but it seemed to have a little different hue to it. The front door that was an off white now has an orange-ish tone. The light brown hallway is now a yellowish color, and the bathroom is more of a cream color. The change we made in one area of the house made other parts look different.

It shouldn’t surprise me, but it does. There have been countless times I have done something different, done something new, changed a bad habit, etc. and that caused me to look at other parts of my life differently. Those parts might never have been noticed, but they were because of changes I made. Once I notice the other parts that now are noticeable I have a decision to make, are these things I can live with or are they things I want/need to change.

Rarely do the changes we make not affect something else. Rarely do the changes I make only affect me. Rarely do the changes you make only affect you. Stopping bad habits, or making healthier choices (mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually), or daring to try something you have wanted to do for some time now, etc. can be difficult because it is a change. These changes can point out other changes we need to make, or it points out to others changes they need to make.

If I had really realized how much work “just” painting the living room was going to be I might have argued a little harder with my wife to keep things the same, but I know that when all is said and done I will enjoy the changes that we have made. If we know how hard a “little” change is really going to be, we probably would never change, but some of the little changes we make end up being some of the best decisions of our lives.