When God Said, "Paint What You See"

How Nine Women, One Year Ago, Left the Plan Behind — and Found Something More Beautiful

📍 Story Moment:

Trixi's Creations' Studio, 29 March 2025 — nine women arrived with brushes in hand, a sunflower to paint, and a canvas full of possibility.

There's something holy about a blank canvas.

It stands waiting — white, wide, and full of promise — like an unopened morning, like a held breath before the first word of a song. Nine canvases lined the table in Trixi's Creations' Studio one year ago today, each one propped at an angle, each one leaning into the light as if it already knew something we didn't.

The plan was simple: nine women, nine sunflowers, one glorious morning of colour and community.

📖 "For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope." — Jeremiah 29:11 (NKJV)

We had our own thoughts about that morning. We knew what we'd come to create but God had other ideas.

Before the first brushstroke fell, something unexpected happened.

The women looked up.

The walls of the studio were alive with art — paintings layered and hung and breathing with colour. Owls with wide, knowing eyes. Palm trees silhouetted against blazing sunsets. Wildflowers tumbling from cream jugs. A dancer in crimson. A hobbit door nestled in green. Verse upon verse in paint and gold.

One by one, quietly and almost shyly, each woman turned to me and asked: "Can I paint that? 🤔" — her finger pointing at something on the wall, something that had called to her heart before her head had a chance to reason it away.

Not every heart leaned toward the sunflower I had planned to teach.

One woman was drawn to the tropical sky — all that blaze of pink and blue, those bold palm silhouettes standing steady against a painted dusk. Another found herself pulled toward wildflowers, loose and joyful, spilling from a textured jug in every direction. One young heart saw the owl — wide-eyed, bright, perched in blue and gold — and she smiled as if she'd recognised an old friend.

And yes, some did paint the sunflower. Golden, bold, "Simply Blessed" in letters that shone like a declaration.

No two canvases were the same. No two women had painted what anyone else had painted. Each one had followed the quiet nudge of her own heart — and in doing so, each one had painted something true.

🕊️ The Holy Spirit, it seems, had been curating that gallery long before any of us arrived.

📖 "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them." — Ephesians 2:10 (NKJV)

This weekend, one year on, we remembered.

We gathered again — brushes in hand, canvases waiting — and someone said, "Do you remember?🤔 We all came for sunflowers, and not one of us stayed with the plan."

We laughed the way you laugh when something is too full of God to explain with ordinary words.

💔 So many of us live like that, don't we?🤔 We arrive at our lives with a plan. A tidy, sensible, agreed-upon canvas. We know what we're meant to paint. We know the colours, the shape, the outcome.

Then God shows us the walls of the studio — the breadth of what He's already prepared, the beauty He's been curating for you — and something inside us stirs beyond the plan.

🌱 Maybe following that stirring isn't deviation. Maybe it's obedience of a different, more intimate kind.

The owl that said "beYOUtiful." The palm trees burning gold at dusk. The wildflowers that couldn't be contained in their jug. The sunflower that declared: "Simply Blessed."

Every painting was right. Every painting was true. Every painting was the woman who held the brush.

💔 You were made for more than someone else's canvas. You were made to hold your own brush, follow your own stirring, and paint the thing that only you can see.

🙏 That isn't rebellion. That is Imago Dei.

✍️ Story in a Sentence: "Nine women came to paint sunflowers — and God, who had been curating the walls all along, gave each one permission to paint herself."

🪨 Life Verse in this season:

📖 "I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; marvellous are Your works, and that my soul knows very well." — Psalm 139:14 (NKJV)

💡 Reflection:

"You don't have to have it all figured out to begin. Your story matters — even the parts that still hurt, even the chapters you'd rather skip. Take a moment with these questions and let the Holy Spirit lead you gently…"

1. What "plan" have you been holding for your life that might be keeping you from seeing what God has prepared on the walls? 🤔

2. What stirs in you when you allow yourself to look up — to see beyond what's expected of you? 🤔

3. Is there an expression, a gifting, a longing — a version of you — that you've been leaving unpainted? What's holding the brush back? 🤔

4. In what area of your life is God whispering, "beYOUtiful — not what they expected, but exactly what I made"? 🤔

5. If your life right now were a painting, what would it look like — and what might you be surprised to discover is already beautiful? 🤔

🌱 Affirmation:

You are not a deviation from the plan. You are the plan.

God didn't make a mistake when He wired you differently, when He lit your heart up for something no one else expected, when He placed a longing in you that doesn't fit the template. The owl, the palm tree, the wildflowers — they all belong on the wall. They were always meant to be there.

Your canvas isn't wrong. It's yours.

🕊️ "And if this is your story too — even a fragment of it — know that you are not alone. God sees. God knows. God redeems."

🙌 Prayer:

"Lord, I lay this story — all of it — at Your feet. The beautiful parts and the broken ones. Take it, and let it be of use…"

Father, thank You for the blank canvases — for mornings full of possibility, for moments when the plan gives way to something more tender, more true. Thank You for curating the walls long before we arrived. Thank You for every woman who looked up and felt permission stir inside her.

Help us to trust that stirring. Help us to pick up the brush, even when the colours feel uncertain, even when we're not sure the image will turn out right. Remind us that You see the finished work before the first stroke falls — and that You call it good.

Where we've been painting someone else's version of our life, give us the courage to look up. Show us the walls. Let us see what You've prepared for us.

May every canvas — every life, every story, every unfinished work in progress — carry the beauty of being wholly, freely, exactly who You made us to be.

In Jesus' Name, Amen.

🕯️ One year ago, nine women walked into my studio with a plan.

They walked out with something far more precious: proof that God is always painting something more beautiful than we could arrange for ourselves.

The canvases have dried. The paint has set. The memories have settled into the kind of warmth that returns to you like sunlight through a window — unexpected, generous, kind.

One year on, we still carry those paintings. Not just the ones we made with our hands, but the one He's been making with our lives — stroke by stroke, colour by colour, in His perfect and unhurried time.

Your canvas isn't finished yet. The Painter hasn't put down His brush.

🕯️ "This is my story. This is His glory. And it's still being written."

🌸 A Gentle Call to Action

If this reflection spoke to your heart, I invite you to take it deeper:

Journal your thoughts and prayers as you process these truths.

👉🏻Explore my Devotional Collection for more writings that weave Scripture and creativity together. https://www.trixiscreations.com/devotional-collection

👉🏻Visit my This is My Story page, where I share the deeper journey behind my art, writing, and ministry — a testimony of God’s restorative love in the broken places. www.patriziaschwartz.com/blog

👉🏻Consider joining one of my Healing 💔heARTs💖 gatherings or paint parties, where we create, share, and heal together in God’s presence. https://www.trixiscreations.com/healing-hearts

Your story matters. Your freedom matters. And most of all, you are deeply loved by the God who sets captives free.