This morning my daughter brings out her whiteboard easel and draws me a coconut palm. She says, "Mom, you will love this." My coconut obsession has infiltrated my daughter's imagination.
She carefully chooses the right dry erase markers. A whiteboard offers the kind of freedom and mistake-proof activity just right for her age. Permanent errors do not exist with whiteboards. You just start fresh with a simple wipe of a cloth.
"Let's start fresh," is a phrase we repeat in our family, not just with the whiteboard, but after disagreements, complaining, failures, or bad moods. We give a hug and say again, "Let's start fresh."
Reading about whiteboards, we discover that the non-porous surface means the ink cannot sink in, and even if it could, the dry erase markers have a chemical compound that makes the ink dry too fast for staining. So the color rests on top, and you can wipe it away, leaving no residue on the surface.
Living with flair means we work as a whiteboard. No matter what happens today, we can start fresh right now. This failure doesn't sink in and doesn't stain. We don't let it. We start fresh.
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Journal: Who needs a fresh start today?
This was such a great post Heather. It is a good reminder that each day is new....like a clean white board! God's mercies are new every morning!
ReplyDeleteI love this post, but I think there's another perspective on erasing. Sometimes my daughter and I draw together with crayons or pastels on a single piece of paper. When we start the shared drawing, one of us inevitably says, "ugh, that looks awful, let's start over." But we don't start over. Instead we draw more, responding to what's on the page by adding color, form, layers, dimension, and transforming the "mistake" into something beautiful that we never could have imagined when we began. I agree that sometimes it's best to start fresh, but sometimes working with what initially appears ugly and wrong is the best way to get beyond your own limitations.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your wonderful Blog, Heather, it's the only one I read every day!
Risa
I love this perspective, Risa! Awesome!
ReplyDeleteMy girls and I called it "do overs" which means the same thing as a fresh start. I'm so glad that each day God gives me a "do over".
ReplyDeleteDid you know they now make whiteboard paint?!?! I love the idea of that!
ReplyDeleteLove BOTH your and Risa's analogies!
ReplyDeleteI like this. Glad God see it this way too.
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