#12 - Van Gogh and Me

reflections on a visit to the Met

When you’re a mom of 5, it can be hard to get away overnight. My kids are wonderful, but the youngest is quite clingy, so none of the grandparents felt confident enough to watch all the kids so I could do a getaway with my husband for my 30th birthday. Then I found out that one of my friends has a birthday the day before mine, so we formed an alliance. Their family moved in with ours, and our husbands watched all eight kids together so we could go on a quick girls’ trip. I had several cities in mind that we could visit, but my #1 goal was this: I would love to see some Van Goghs in person. So to New York City we went! (And we had a super lovely time.)

Do you know why I like Vincent Van Gogh so much? Pretty much everyone likes his work, so it’s not like I’m special or super knowledgeable about the art world for liking him. I haven’t even read any full biographies on him (yet.)

I like Van Gogh because he was a struggler. He was honest about that. I’m a struggler, too, but I never know the best ways to be honest about it.

He painted about 142 pieces while he was a self-admitted patient in an asylum, and some of those are on display at the Met. The anguish he felt as a prisoner in his own mind was tangible; that’s why it’s so powerful to see his work.

He was shockingly lavish with paint even though he was dreadfully poor. (He only ever sold one painting when he was alive.) His strokes captured the constant motion that exists in everything but that the rest of us aren’t really attuned to. (See this video about it!)

I’m not an artist and I don’t know much about art, but Van Gogh’s  works touch my heart because they overwhelm me with compassion. I wish so badly I could give the man a hug and tell him how much he’s loved. In him I see my struggling friends, and in him I see myself, and my own struggles. Sometimes the most gifted people around us feel the most broken, the most desperate. They don’t fit into our boxes of how people “should” look or act, so we disregard them.

Author and cartoonist Scott Adams came up with “the basket case theory” that basically means we’re all crazy basket-cases if anyone gets to know us long enough. (There’s a jazzy song about it; language warning.) I tend to agree.

We are all desperately broken in our own ways. We must be honest with ourselves about this. Van Gogh was honest with his self-portraits—even when his image included a bandaged ear, which he chopped off himself—and that’s why they’re so good. There really isn’t a point to not being honest with ourselves and where we’re at and what we’re feeling.

Like dear Vincent, I just feel like a failure sometimes. I don’t owe the internet the specifics of my frustrations with myself, but, boy, they are there. It’s not the worst thing to look at those things and admit them, especially if it’s important to me that I’m better at them. But the toxic thing is when my thoughts end there, with me being a victim to my own lack of self-discipline, hoping for a hero (also myself) to come in and save the day. Victim, villain, and hero? That’s just a lot of me.

My friend Katie shared with me that when we’re not in the habit of reminding ourselves of truth, we tend to give too much weight to our own performance. We don’t need to do that.

Do you know why I named my fifth child Isaiah Reed? Because I love that verse in Isaiah 42:3, “a bruised reed he will not break,  and a smoldering wick he will not quench.” My Jesus is gentle with me.

I’ve tried not believing in Him, but it’s never worked because when I would lay in bed at night with big burdens on my heart, and I would try not to pray because it felt unintelligent, I found myself doing it anyway because I missed Him. I need to know that Someone looks at me in my struggles—and knows the gross depths of them even better than I do—but He loves me endlessly. Tenderly. Regardless of my failures.

Anyway, when I see the paintings of Van Gogh—and I think this was my fourth time doing so—I feel the love of God. I feel such deep compassion for Vincent—and all the Vincents in my life—and I know that Jesus has compassion for me.

And that is why I love Van Gogh.

I hope you feel loved by God this week, too.

Love,
Hope