I sat and stared at my empty wall, the wall of my dining room that had once been occupied by a giant green forest tapestry. Like many things I’ve loved, I grew out of it and began to feel as if it were time for something new.

God’s been teaching me lately to be at peace with the unfinished, the empty—to be ok during the process of finding whatever it is I need to find. For me, it’s uncomfortable to leave things unfinished, but the truth is, that’s exactly what I needed to do with my dining room. I needed to sit for a little while with an empty wall before deciding what exactly needed to go there. A big part of life is waiting, searching, building, and growing. A big part of life is learning to be fully present in these times and even enjoy it.

God spoke to me today, He reminded me of the last time in my life I felt empty. My best friend moved away, and my father passed away. Then the man I had loved for five years moved away as well. Everyone was exiting my life one by one it seemed. I got to a point where I had no stability in my career but was moving around as a temp from job to job. I had nowhere to lay my head except in the arms of Christ. He reminded me of how sweet that season really was. Ironically enough, what was arguably the most empty season of my life was actually the most beautiful and peace-filled. I’ve come to realize it was because my life had been emptied of everything except for Him, He who is peace, there was nothing left to distract me.

I’m now re-entering a season of emptiness, a season of loss, rejection, uncertainty, a season of walking away from things that no longer fit. Instead of resisting it, I’ve made it a point to find peace in it, to focus on my relationship with God—the thing that matters most, the thing I never have to be emptied of.

Every time I passed by my empty wall, I began to appreciate it more and more. I realized it’s better for a wall to be empty than to be filled with something that doesn’t fit. I realized a wall is more beautiful unfinished than stagnant. After a couple of weeks, a floral painting arrived in the mail, a painting that I absolutely loved. It was by this time I had actually begun to grow fond of my empty wall. Life is like that sometimes. Sometimes, God doesn’t deliver to us the thing we want until we begin to see the beauty in what is already in front of us.