After I determined my sole purpose in life was not to be the Sugar Plum Fairy, I explored another world that piqued my interest—the world of interior design. I watched the winsome Delta Burke on the TV show Designing Women back in the late 1980s. Working at Sugarbaker & Associates seemed like a fabulous gig. The TV characters seemed to just sit and talk on luxurious couches all day long. Yep, sign me up. I wanted to be an interior designer.
So off I went to Kansas State University, declaring interior design as my major. Over the next four years I learned that real designers do not sit on couches and talk all day long. They work hard. And I worked hard, building foamcore models and sketching countless floorplans.
By the time my senior year of college rolled around, I had the rest of my life figured out. My plan was to graduate and move to New York City and own my own design firm. Make millions of dollars. Drive a Mercedes and carry a Prada purse on my arm. Have a ten-foot waterfall wall encircled by a reflecting pond in the middle of my living room. My little twentysomething brain seriously concluded that the rest of my days were going to be filled with these things and with colorful fabric swatches.
Somewhere in between watching reruns of O.J. Simpson fleeing the police on a California freeway and the court case that followed, I designed the life I wanted to live. In May of 1998, I graduated with a BS in interior design. I eventually connected with a design firm in Phoenix, Arizona, and moved there the following July.
Over the next year, I dived into the fundamental teachings of my faith. I attended my first Bible study and met my first Christian friend. This same friend encouraged me to join her in serving the youth at our church. I flat out laughed at her. Youth ministry? This meant I’d have to see and be around teenagers. No way, not me. Not going to happen. But my friend persisted, so I ended up with a group of teenage girls to mentor. As the years passed and more teen girls came into my life, I tried to ignore God’s calling, but he wouldn’t let me. God had a different kind of interior design for me to do.
The first group of teenage girls I mentored were younger versions of me. As I looked into their faces and listened to their doubts and fears, my heart broke. No one had taught my teenage heart about Jesus either. I realized that this was a chance for me to help my girls learn about the one Person who alone defines, fulfills, and loves perfectly and eternally. True beauty and significance is found in Jesus Christ alone. It’s not in fashionable products, position, power, or people’s opinions. How I wanted my girls to grasp this. To live this.
So I poured myself into the lives of these girls, teaching them the biblical truths most precious to me. To my amazement, they actually listened, except for when a cute boy walked by. So of course our Bible study chats would usually end up focusing on boys, but I do believe they caught something about Jesus along the way.
I was happily designing offices during the day, discussing plausible prom dresses at night, and playing paintball on the weekend at youth retreats. Eventually I was asked to consider serving as an intern for the youth ministry at my church. Why me? I felt like an underdog when it came to anything ministry related, and there was this small issue of me being a woman. Men served in the majority of the paid leadership positions in our church. But my gender and lack of biblical knowledge were never an issue with God. Every excuse I offered him was lovingly ignored. So I started interning and also enrolled in seminary.
Now this is straight up hilarious.
I went to a secular school and not a Bible college to study interior design. But I soon found myself shoulder deep in hermeneutics, theological doctrines, and the writings of Josephus. To say I was overwhelmed and feeling inferior as I studied beside seasoned male pastors is an understatement. Two years later, I graduated and was hired by my church to be their full-time director of student women.
As the years passed, I trained and shepherded the volunteer staff of women, and organized and led mission trips and purity conferences. I held broken young women as they disclosed their struggles with their sexual purity, eating disorders, depression, suicidal thoughts, drug addiction, and self-harm. I cried with one of my girls as she handed her newborn daughter over to the adoption agency. I heard and saw the effects of rape and divorce, and held the hand of a weeping student as we buried her classmate.
These are what I call “holy moments” that I will carry with me forever. These are the moments when I witnessed God’s presence trump the collision of faith and circumstance. Over and over God moved, changed, healed, comforted, and restored. To watch this happen in the lives of his children captivates me and leaves me speechless.
Who am I that the Lord would allow me to love even one of his children? I’ve learned that my arms are not here to hold Prada purses. My arms are here to hold the hurting.
From loving on-trend paint colors to loving on people.
From one kind of interior design to another.
I was now a woman in ministry.
When God Said No to King David
Following God is not always easy nor is it dull. You may, however, find some comfort in remembering that God said no to his sons and daughters throughout Scripture as well. Even King David, who was probably a killer paintball player (just ask Goliath) and loved God with his whole heart, heard a no from God in regard to something he wanted to do for God. In his own way, David set his eye on a different kind of Prada purse that was of great value and worth. The mighty king wanted to build a temple for God, whom he loved. But this was not in the plans that God had designed for his life. So God said no to David.
Thank goodness for King David. The psalms that he penned encourage and comfort my heart. If I’m feeling frustrated or scared I turn to Psalm 23 or Psalm 91. When I find myself growing impatient or feeling down, I run to the words that David wrote in Psalm 27 and Psalm 42. I am a Psalms groupie. I cannot get enough of them.
The Psalms are one of David’s pops of color. He was also a shepherd, a great military victor, and king of Israel—all pops of color that went along with God’s movement in David’s life, aligning him with his emphases. But there was one thing David desired to do that would have put him over into the too-much-red-in-one-room category.
To be fair, I want to show David some grace, and not just because I’m his groupie. He was the king. He clearly worshiped God and desired for the rest of Israel to follow his lead. And yet according to 1 Kings 3:2–4, all of Israel was worshiping and sacrificing to God on “high places,” or altars that were located on lofty and visible places.
I believe we can worship or love God from wherever we are, but high places were often used for the worship of false gods. Perhaps David was bothered by this, but what 2 Samuel 7:2 says is that David saw how he himself was dwelling in a “house of cedar, while the ark of God remains in a tent.”
So I don’t fault David for wanting to build a temple that could provide a place for God to be worshiped in ways befitting and honoring his holiness. When David told Nathan the prophet his plan, his advisor gave him a thumbs-up. So things were looking up for David. He had the heart, the resources, and the support of a good and godly buddy to proceed with building a temple for God.
Go and tell my servant David, “This is what the LORD says: Are you the one to build me a house to dwell in? I have not dwelt in a house from the day I brought the Israelites up out of Egypt to this day. I have been moving from place to place with a tent as my dwelling. Wherever I have moved with all the Israelites, did I ever say to any of their rulers whom I commanded to shepherd my people Israel, ‘Why have you not built me a house of cedar?’” (2 Sam. 7:5–7)
I have to chuckle at this passage because it is like God is saying, “Hey, I am dwelling okay here on my own. I haven’t asked you for a temple, so why are you trying to give me one, David?” Oh, how we love to be an all-red room for God sometimes.
There is wisdom in saying no. There is blessing in hearing no too.
Rejection and no are not always bad things. They are often emphasis-making things from the hand of God. I cannot be all things to all people all the time. Neither can you, and neither could King David.
Like King David, my friend Erin has also struggled with this very thing. She had visions of being the perfectly-on-time, Martha Stewart, wearing-stilettos type of mom. So Erin tried to look flawless in her stilettos and live a perfect life while toting two toddlers (who were also going to grow up and be perfect) around town. You can probably guess what she learned along the way. Erin says:
Eventually, I realized that I had spent so much time “being all things to all people” that I prevented God from molding me into the woman he had designed me to be so many years before. I had ripped that divine paintbrush right out of the ultimate Artist’s hands and attempted to paint my own version of life. I can’t keep up that “striving” game anymore. I’m not meant to be the world’s greatest anything. And I am happy to report to you that I am perfectly fine . . . strike that, I am giddy about that these days. Never have I felt better about lounging in my sweatpants, snuggling with my kiddos, and clinging to the truth that God loves me exactly the way I am.
~Erin Hollis
Erin’s giddiness is evident to those who know her. I love watching her enjoy her redesigned life. Be encouraged if you are feeling passed over, unnoticed, or weary from striving. The fact that God gives you and me emphasis makes us significant and proves that God wants to be known and loved by us. God wants us—like Erin—to feel giddy and not just good about our life and about his love for us.
In fact, the passage in 2 Samuel 7 that we looked at earlier revealed that God willingly dwelt among the Israelites in a man-made tent. This speaks volumes. God willingly wants to be with his couture, one-of-a-kind children. And the less we strive to do all of the things, the more we will be able to enjoy time with our God and rest in the unique ways he has designed for us to pop.
The scene we looked at from King David’s life shows that God will override our plans—even if other people support them—whenever they don’t align with his emphasis for us. God will also intervene and say no directly through people’s counsel or, yes, through their rejection. This is tough and painful; rejection in any form hurts. But a better or clearer emphasis may come into focus from a season of dismissal too.
God told David he was not to build the temple. First Chronicles 22:8 and 28:3 further reveal this was because David had shed much blood and was a man of war. Despite David’s military conquests, David had been God’s shepherd and king, thus fulfilling his emphases. God reminded David that he was with him every step of the way and that he would make David’s name great (2 Sam. 7:8–13). God also promised David a period of rest and that he would use Solomon, David’s son, to build the temple.
God’s designs for David’s life did not include building a temple. Instead, David’s redesigned life was full of pastures, politics, and the penning of psalms that touch countless hearts today. David’s emphasis, though it was different from his son Solomon’s, was just as beautiful and needed.
How to Pop When Necessary
My emphasis is redesigning homes and hearts with the words of God. What is your emphasis? Are you walking in it? If you’ve tried to add a pop of color to your corner of the world and God has intervened, why might that be?
Our answers to these questions will vary, but if you are finding yourself continually in a busy season, prone to giving in to all-red-room thinking, or feeling unsure about when or how to use your pop of color, try the following tips:
So if you ever thought that by now you’d be living in the city or home of your dreams and making one million dollars and, well . . . you aren’t, it’s okay to admit your disappointment or feelings of failure to yourself and to your God. Ask him to heal you of those feelings. Realize that you’re beautifully gifted to do something else with your life and that God is redesigning you so you can bless the lives of others and bring glory to him.
Don’t be all things, just be you-things.
Your emphasis matters in God’s eyes. May this encourage you whenever your life doesn’t go as planned.
Your arms are not here to hold Prada. They’re here to hold people. And as you do so, be mindful of the patterns around or within you. Because whenever you see a pattern, you’d better start praying.