by Screamin Mama

Created on: September 09, 2008

Before I had my children, I was very active, very social and very fit. I swam, danced, ran and skated. I worked for a lawyer, volunteered at a local theater, wrote reviews for a music magazine and played pretty darn good guitar in a really great band. I even had time to go to college, socialize with friends, buy new clothes, eat right and take care of myself. I had endless energy, amazing determination and high ambitions. I was sitting on top of the world. So I thought.

After the kids were born and a painful divorce, my world crashed fast and I fell off that high horse - hard. I was destroyed. Done. Finished. Zip. Kaput. I stopped going to school, stopped writing, stopped playing the guitar. I didn't clean the house, didn't open the mail, didn't eat right - I didn't even brush my hair. My living room walls were half turquoise and half gold. I didn't care. Nothing mattered - except for my two children. After a failed marriage I was not going to fail as a mother. I needed help, and lots of it.

I attended a local church, warm and friendly, and everything I needed in the way of emotional and spiritual support. I went through DivorceCare and Boundaries classes over and over. I started to realize how much God was missing in my life and I realized how desperately I needed Him. I registered for a CrossCurrent class and started to reconnect.

In one of the classes, we read an article that included a topic on the artist and his painting. It reminded me of DaVinci and his Mona Lisa. I took an art class awhile back and I remembered learning how Leonardo took that painting from Italy to France. It was bought by a King and then given to Louis XIV, who moved the painting to the Palace of Versailles. It was owned by Napoleon I, moved back to the Louvre and during the Franco-Prussian War, it was moved somewhere else in France. The Mona Lisa was a masterpiece and everyone wanted a piece of it.
I continued to read the article. It discussed how paintings get dirty and tarnished, ripped and torn. After being dragged through all those battlefields of love and war, the rich and vibrant colors start to fade. The beautiful lines, curves and shape get tarnished and smudged, and eventually, the painting winds up in a corner - ugly, dirty and messy. The artist searches high and low for his painting, but no one knows of his beautiful work. He keeps looking and finally, he finds it in the corner, in the dark lifeless and alone. He can still see the original beauty under all that mess, even

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