My 3 year old granddaughter now allows me to have pink as my favorite color, along with her.

“Two of us, we both like pink!” she joyfully declares.

She knows everyone’s favorite color (or assigns it to them) and for awhile I couldn’t convince her that the two of us could share a favorite color. What a relief that this is all worked out…

Pink really is my favorite color. For years I said that it was green or blue. One day I looked at my closet – pink is definitely the predominant color! If pink is ever an option I have to choose it. I just looked up and saw on my desk: my pink phone case, a pink computer mouse, a pink cosmetic bag from Ashley, a little Playmobil knight to which I had added pink accents with nail polish and the pink paper flower I left out when packing so I can keep looking at it. I am wearing a pink shirt.

With all that said – I do not use pink to decorate my house. There I do like blues and greens… nevertheless… Two of us, we both like pink!

Somehow this little video popped up a couple days ago and I watched it because it was about a pink crayon, or the lack thereof. I hope that you will watch it – it only takes 90 seconds to tell the story.

Wow! I can totally relate! What is my pink crayon? It is Mark Andrus. It is all the plans we made for our future. It is every moment of every day that we were looking forward to experiencing TOGETHER!!

Just like that – this option is no longer available. There are many other options but they are simply not my favorite. It is hard to get my head around this but when I do I often weep, but more and more often I am able to scrape together some sort of primal confidence which I mix together with my faith and try to envision Mark’s encouragement. I know he thinks that I have it in me to figure it all out… Except, wait! He and I figure things out TOGETHER… and I am right back where I began.

Sometimes that pink crayon is just not there and you have to look and see there are many other beautiful colors. Eventually I will find the crayons that work for me.

What are your pink crayons? Over and over life doesn’t turn out as we had planned. Over and over things tend to work out anyway (usually for the better), especially when we don’t freeze up because our first choice is no longer an option. I am a bit frozen right now, but I know that little by little fresh color will flow into my life and I will be able to find new favorite things or make do with what is before me.

As I type I keep looking up and seeing the box of crayons on the video link. There really are a lot of beautiful colors. Are you frozen also? Choose a new color and by so doing, inspire me to do the same. Life will just be a bit more colorful than I had planned.

I was about to publish this post without a photo when I realized that I had worn pink to Mark’s funeral. I added a black skirt of course. I hadn’t been able to find the right outfit, but when I saw this suit I knew that Mark would love it – and it was pink! I wasn’t sure if it was proper for the new widow to wear a bright color, but I thought it was appropriate for me because along with the sorrow I have an inner joy that I wanted to express. I also like this photo – Mark’s friend sent it to me. He had been trying to capture the photo of Mark’s marker and the coffin when I happened to step into the frame. I also just noticed that both of my granddaughters also made it into the shot as well as two of his brothers and one of my sons – kind of a Where’s Waldo game.