The Woman at the Well, and the Woman Who Painted Her
This ensemble took me so long to put together.
I spent hours in stores looking for the perfect gift wrap to enclose the letter. I brought home four options and tested them all out. Target's Easter collection had the winning print this month, a tiny flower print that matched the flowers I painted in the foreground of my Woman at the Well painting, tying it all together without overpowering it.
I want the patterned paper to enhance, not overpower. That matters to me. Every detail of what arrives in her mailbox should feel intentional, like someone thought carefully about her before she ever opened the envelope.
(And honestly…I have now exhausted every wrapping paper variety in every local shop within driving distance. My next post will show you what I'm doing about that.)
But the wrapping paper was the easy part.
The harder part was deciding what to paint. What to write about. What April's woman needed to hear.
I kept coming back to the Woman at the Well.
My why for choosing her?
I struggle with feeling like I am enough.
Not in a dramatic, crisis kind of way. Just in the quiet, persistent, ordinary way that I think a lot of women carry without ever saying out loud. Am I good enough at my work? At being a mom? At being a wife? There are so many corners of my life where I feel like I am falling short…doing the right things but somehow still missing the where I feel I should be.
The Woman at the Well understood that feeling.
She came to draw water in the middle of the day, not in the cool of the morning with the other women. She came alone. She has good reasons for that. But the point is she knew what it felt like to not quite belong. To not quite measure up. To move through her ordinary days carrying something heavy and unnamed.
And Jesus was already sitting at the well when she got there.
He didn't wait for her to get her life together. He didn't ask her to clean herself up before the conversation started. He just sat down and asked her for a drink, like He had all the time in the world for a woman the world had written off.
That's the painting I wanted to make.
Not the dramatic version. Not the moment of confrontation. The quiet moment just before, her walking toward the well with her jar, Him already there, already waiting.
I painted her in mauve and lavender because I wanted her to feel soft. Human. Like someone you might recognize.
I painted wildflowers in the foreground because beauty grows in the most ordinary places, even at a well in the middle of the day when you'd rather be invisible.
And I painted Him looking toward her. Not past her. Not through her.
At her.
I called the painting "Known." Because that's the whole story in one word.
The letter I wrote that month was really a letter to myself.
About waiting for a big moment to feel different. A sign. A clear answer. Something dramatic that would finally make sense of everything.
And about the quiet realization that He doesn't wait for the dramatic moments. He shows up in the ordinary ones. The regular errand. The middle of the day. He was already at the well.
He's already at yours.
"Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again. But whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst." — John 4:14
He wasn't talking about the well.
If April's letter found you at the right moment, I'd love to keep sending them.
Holy Muse Mail arrives in mailboxes every month; a hand painted original art print, a prayerfully written letter, and a watercolor scripture card. All wrapped by hand and addressed in gold ink.
Because you deserve something that arrives like it was made specifically for you, because it was.
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