The Beauty of White Space

As a writer, white space can be unnerving.   Looking at the blank page, or monitor as the case may be, can just make you feel so inadequate. What things do I have to say that can fill this page?   Will my words impact others for the good, or will they even know they’ve read the letters on the page?   Can I really put the depths of my heart into mere words for all to see? Some days, the words just.don’t.come.

When I first started scrapbooking I thought every page had to be a piece of art. Stunningly beautiful, telling stories with the photos and embellishments and all the stuff that IS scrapbooking.   I’d spend hours trying to get a single page to look just so, making sure there was no white space, because clearly that spoke of an unfinished layout.   Over time I’ve changed my mindset on this.   Now that I have two children’s lives to document, I have begun to embrace the white space, choosing rather to add little pops of color to contrast against the white space and draw the eye.

I’ve recently started to dabble in the world of art journaling.   I’m clearly out of my element here, because I have to draw and write and paint and…someone shoot me now.   I have an entire Pinterest board set aside specifically for art journaling.   As I look through these colorful, glitzy pins and see how others have swirled and collaged and layered, my mind seizes up with the fact that I can’t do all that.

But then…I see it. In all of those colorful journals and strikingly beautiful layouts, I see it. White space.   It is the white space that really makes the colors pop and become more noticeable. Even the tiniest amount of white space on a dazzling colorful page makes that page light up.

And, so it is with our lives.   It is the white space of our lives that make those red lipstick moments stand out.   It’s the white space of the 3am feedings and all night rocking with a sick child that illuminate the “Hi, Mom” when they find themselves in front of a TV camera.   It’s the white space of hours of late night prayer for a childless friend that shines into the pink and blue hues of a newborn layette years down the road. It is the white space of a listening ear and a nod of the head that bursts through to radiate the silvery hues of a widow as she talks about her lost love.

White space is not to be feared, it is a gift.   Embrace today’s white space in your life. Knowing that it is those ordinary days that give way to the sunrise of tomorrow.