12

Into Your Hands

MARCH

“I had no idea you’d made so much progress,” Kit said, glancing around Wren’s studio at bookshelves and windowsills displaying pencil and charcoal sketches of cups, hands in different positions, and a few unfinished paintings of faces.

“Most of them are just studies,” Wren said. “I’m still trying to figure out what I can do and how to do it. And trying not to get discouraged in the process.”

The Gethsemane one, with its central void, was propped against a stack of books on the table, the trees more brightly colored than before, splashed with some of Vincent’s bright blue and citron yellow. “You didn’t paint over it,” Kit said.

Wren smiled wryly. “How could I, after what you saw in it?” She picked it up. “I’ve got to say how humbling it was, though, that what you noticed and what spoke to you in it wasn’t something I’d intentionally created. That it was just an empty space. Nothing to do with me or my ability as an artist.”

Kit placed her hand on Wren’s back. “I’m sorry that’s what I communicated to you.”

“No, it’s fine. That’s what art does, right? It invites a response. And we can’t control what people see or how they respond to what we create. To what I create.” She shrugged. “Or don’t create.”

With her free hand Kit traced along the contours of the void. “You know what this says to me? This says you were listening. This says you weren’t forcing your own will with the work, that you were waiting for it to emerge. And that you allowed the empty space to be—without trying to fill it.”

Wren laughed. “You make me sound profound. But I would have tried to fill that space, if you hadn’t caught me first.” She set the piece back on the table and gestured toward a few canvases smeared with gray. “All those right there? Those were all my attempts at Gethsemane, all very poor copies of Vincent’s olive trees, and all with a figure kneeling right in the center, with his head in his hands. But I couldn’t capture the wrestling. I couldn’t capture the agony. No matter how hard I tried. I knew it would be beyond me, and it was.”

“Ah,” Kit said quietly, “but you did capture the agony. You captured his presence by painting his absence. That’s what I feel in the void there and in the empty space along the bottom—the invitation to wrestle, surrender, and yes, die. With him.” She squeezed Wren’s shoulder. “Be open to the possibility that the mystery of what emerged in this work mirrors your own journey, not just as an artist, but as a person. You’re inhabiting these spaces with Jesus. And that’s exactly what I hoped and prayed you would do.”

Wren sighed slightly. “I’m still not convinced any of this is for anyone else. Maybe it’s just been for me.”

“Not just for you,” Kit said. “For me too.”

Wren picked at a bit of paint on her fingernail. “And maybe for my family,” she said. “My mom called this morning. They’re still planning to drive out here for spring break, if the weather cooperates. So I was wondering if it would be okay to put up the Journey to the Cross stations early so they can walk through them?”

“Of course!”

“I don’t know what I’ll have finished by then.” She glanced around the room. “Some of these, I guess. I can keep working with these. And then if I decide to put out something different for the real journey—I mean, not the ‘real’ journey, but the open to the public one—I can change things around.”

“We can make anything work,” Kit said, “so, no pressure.” As she took one last look at the Gethsemane painting, she noticed on the table a fanned stack of her letters beside open books of Vincent’s work, a few dried sunflowers, and Casey’s beanie. She gestured toward the tableau. “That looks very Vincent-esque.”

Wren nodded. “I couldn’t bear to throw the flowers out after the service. And then I remembered how Vincent painted dried ones, so I thought I might try it sometime too, though I could never paint sunflowers the way he did. It’s like you could pick the seeds right out of his flowers, they’re so real.” She placed her hand on the stack of letters. “And these. I keep reading them again and again. I can’t thank you enough for writing these for me.”

“Thank you, Wren. I’ve told you before how grateful I am for the spaces opening in me because of your presence in my life. You and I, we’re companions in sorrow. And also in hope.” Kit stroked the tip of a sunflower stem. “I think Vincent would be proud of you. You’re finding your own voice in all of this. And that’s always brave.”

As they put away dinner dishes that night, Wren said she’d been thinking about setting up a prayer collage for one of the stations, as an experiential way of meditating on a Scripture text. “But would that look weird, having one that’s not a painting?”

“Not at all,” Kit said. “We’ve had other interactive stations over the years.” One of her favorites was a full-sized cross with a mirror angled at the center of the crossbeam so that someone kneeling in front of it could see their own reflection and ponder the meaning. “Which one are you thinking about?”

“Jesus speaking to the women weeping. I’ve been picturing the sorrow collages you did at your retreat and wondered about inviting people to glue or tape images onto the shape of a cross. They could choose photos from your files or cut out pictures or headlines from newspapers or magazines—anything that feels sad or overwhelming. But then there would be a community piece to it too—everyone placing the images on the cross to offer in prayer. So it’s like what you wrote in one of your letters, how the community of sorrow can become the community of hope.”

“It’s perfect,” Kit said. “A perfect way to pray with that text.”

“Oh, good. If I can manage it, I’ll look through headlines and see what catches my attention. There’s plenty of sad to choose from these days.”

“So true,” Kit said. “You don’t need to do that alone, though. We can do it together.”

“Thanks. I’d like that.” She checked her phone when it buzzed with a text, then put it back on the kitchen counter. “Every time it buzzes, I wonder if it’ll be Casey’s mom. But it never is. And probably won’t ever be.”

Kit studied her face, trying to discern her expression. Regret? Resignation? Or a peaceful surrender? “How do you feel about that?” she asked.

Wren shrugged. “I did what I thought was right to do. I’ve got to let the other desires go. Or, I guess I should say, keep letting them go.”

Yes, Kit thought. Letting go was always the invitation. “Can you think of anything that might help with that? Maybe a physical embodiment of that desire?”

Wren thought a moment, then said, “I probably should delete the text she sent me. But I feel like that’s too simple, like it doesn’t leave enough of an imprint. I’m not sure if that makes sense.”

Kit closed the cupboard doors and draped the dish towel over the rack. “I’d love to hear more about that.”

Wren leaned back against the counter. “I think what I want to do is mark it somehow, to incorporate it as part of a larger picture of healing and forgiveness. Maybe I could copy and paste it into an email and print it, then shred it and use it in a collage. Or”—here, her eyes widened—“print it and burn it and use the ashes in one of the Journey to the Cross paintings.”

Before Kit could reply, Wren furrowed her brow and said, “Or would that be self-centered, making the art too therapeutic? I mean, I know we put ourselves into our work and work things through in the process of creating, but this might be a little much. I don’t want to make the paintings about me. That feels selfish.”

They were cut from the same cloth, the two of them. Kit was just about to remind Wren of the conversations they’d had over her own hesitation to share her story with others, for fear of calling too much attention to herself, when Wren said, “But maybe it’s not. If I see it as an offering to Jesus, then it’s not selfish, is it? It’s a gift of myself. My raw and honest self. And maybe it’s even something he can use to help someone else.”

“I think it’s a beautiful vision,” Kit said.

Wren smiled slowly, her eyes lit. “There’s something to it, isn’t there? Like the ashes on our foreheads. A way of marking the journey forward by letting go of what lies behind.”

Kit nodded and said, “Amen.”

MARCH 13

My dear Wren,

I keep thinking about your idea of incorporating ashes into your work. It makes me wish I still had some of the angry letters I wrote and never sent, letters I threw away after the cathartic experience of writing them. I would have burned them and asked you to paint something redemptive for me as well. I wonder, too, why I felt compelled not to destroy my final “I forgive you” letter to Robert, but instead to bury it at Micah’s grave. Maybe, like you so insightfully expressed, I needed to mark something solid and final with it and not just let it disappear.

After my divorce I desperately wanted a fresh start—which can be hard to attain in a community as small and interconnected as West Michigan. But I knew I needed to take a first step, so I gave up using my nickname Kit—which family and friends had always used—and started going by Katherine in new or professional contexts. I also started attending a different church, Church of the Redeemer. It was the art that first drew me there—something familiar for me to hold onto after my experience of praying with the stations of the cross at the psychiatric hospital. Some Sundays I would simply sit at the far end of the back pew, stare at the carving of Jesus before Pilate, and cry.

It must have been the first service of the new year, nearly two years after Micah died, that the pastor invited us to write on slips of paper sins we wanted to confess or regrets and shame we wanted to release. I don’t remember now what I would have written, but I joined the line of others who walked to the front of the sanctuary to place our slips of paper at the foot of the cross. After the service, without reading them, the pastor gathered all the slips into a single manila envelope, and we went out to the church parking lot to watch them burn. He lined an ordinary stock pot with aluminum foil, placed the envelope in the pot, and lit a match. As the envelope burned, I happened to notice the shadow of the pot, which had somehow elongated into the shape of a pillar with a dome on top, with the shadows of the smoke rising from it, swirling on the pavement. It looked like an altar. I don’t know if anyone else noticed it—and I wish now that I had thought to call someone else’s attention to it—but it spoke to me deeply and personally, that the releasing of our sins, regrets, and shame was a pleasing offering to the Lord.

After the envelope burned, the pastor carefully gathered up all the ashes and said they would be incorporated into our ashes for Ash Wednesday. It was a meaningful experience for us when we went forward that year to receive on our foreheads the reminder of the price Jesus paid for our forgiveness and freedom. Exactly as you said: that we mark the journey forward by letting go of what lies behind.

Most years—weather permitting—we gather after our Palm Sunday service, palm branches in hand, and march outside waving them. Then we lay them on a bonfire. This, too, is powerful imagery—that all of the expectations we carry with us of who Jesus is as a conquering king and mighty warrior are laid down as we enter into the mysteries of Holy Week and the reality of the cross. It’s all part of the journey. The cross not only rightly reorients our hopes and longings, but ultimately accomplishes far more glorious victories than any of the pilgrims who waved their branches along the road to Jerusalem could have imagined. Every year when I lay down my palm branch in the fire, I try to practice the discipline of laying down my assumptions about what victory looks like in my life or in the lives of those I love.

“It is finished!” Jesus called from the cross. But he also prayed, “Into your hands I commit my spirit.” This is the ultimate modeling both of letting go and declaring hope. What a beautiful prayer of relinquishment and trust. For all of us.

I look forward with eager anticipation to see how the ashes in your life will become an image of beauty and a testimony of hope and redemption—not just for you, but for others.

With you,

Kit