Painting The Walls
I picked the word “Desire” as my 2024 word of the year.
It proved to be tough word, but a one that stuck with me more often than it floated off like past years.
I didn’t indulge every desire. In fact, more of my effort was spent trying to identify my desires than making them come to pass. It’s hard work for an enneagram 9.
To kick off the practice of noticing desire, I paid attention to frustration.
Frustration would often bubble up when something I desired wasn’t coming to pass. Usually, it was alone time. Or time at my pottery wheel. Or a kind of food I had been mentioning for weeks only for it to get shot down by my picky kids every time.
But then I noticed a long-brewing desire in the background steeped in a different emotion, embarrassment.
When we bought our first house in 2018, one of our named desires for a home was a space to invite people in and practice hospitality. Marc and I aren’t naturally gifted with hospitality. We have to plan, pump ourselves up, and then work up the nerve to actually follow through on having people into our home.
This summer I realized that I had been making excuses to not have people into my home because I was embarrassed about the paint on the walls.
I know, it’s silly. Surface. Not a reason to keep yourself from friendship. No one even notices when they come over, but I did. And I cringed. After 6 years of living in this house, the paint no longer looked fresh, and worse, it was cold and lifeless. That old Ice Sculpture blue flat paint isn’t what I would have chosen in a million years.
The first project milestone: cutting in two walls!
OH! I want to paint the living room and kitchen!
There it is, the desire tucked away in embarrassment.
After mentally working through the ideal scenario of hiring painters - a scenario we could not afford - I decided that done might be better than perfect in this case. After all, painting didn’t have to be an expensive project.
So I finally said something to my husband. And then I said it again. And again. And one more time. Because sometimes in order for him to get on board with spending any money at all, he needs to be convinced that it’s important enough to me.
A few budget meetings and trips to the hardware stores later, we hung paint chips on the wall and admired them for a few weeks.
And we kept admiring them. And moving them around. And paying attention to what they looked like in different spaces, next to different things, and in different lighting. We argued. Advocated. Eliminated some options. And finally, we bought the sample jars.
Trying to see if my Instagram followers could correct the pit in my stomach.
At $7 each those sample jars should have felt like no big deal. But in my mind, we were spending the first $21 of hundreds of dollars all for my whims. All of the old voices that tell me “You don’t need that! You don’t deserve that! You can’t have what you want if you didn’t earn the money for it yourself!” crept in as we exited Home Depot with our 3 shades of warm neutrals.
Determined to follow through, I painted 3 big rectangles on 7 different walls in our home. It was my way of fighting back against those voices and saying “See! We have to do it now!”
As the paint swatches dried, my heart sank. I knew immediately — I didn’t want any of these colors.
It’s amazing to me how quickly we can return to old mindsets when we are pushing ourselves toward growth in a new area. Actually, it’s more annoying than amazing if I’m honest.
Paying attention to my desires is a gift I haven’t given myself for decades. I used to think this was very pious of myself. I wore it like a badge of honor.
“Oh don’t worry about me!”
“I’m good with whatever!”
“I’m flexible!”
All of these things are true about me. But I have also spent a lot of my life robbing myself of the very human and fulfilling experience of wanting anything out of my life.
Everything I pursued with intention was a bit of a prescription. I pursued what I thought I was supposed to do with my life. What other people wanted for me. What “God” wanted for me. And quite honestly, it was all very patriarchal and small. I surely never thought to ask myself what I truly wanted.
There have always been clues that the desires I held deep down were begging for some attention, sunlight, fresh air, or water – whatever it is deeply held desires want.
The signs were lack of passion and authenticity. Stubbornness and passive aggressiveness. Holding myself back and then exploding later. Lots of over-promising and underdelivering. And a serious lack of boundaries paired with zero ability to stand people’s disappointment or frustration with me.
I’ve been studying the enneagram and using its lessons for my own personal growth for the better part of a decade, and until this year I’ve been all “Haha, we 9s just have no idea what we want LOLZ.”
Instead of putting in the work to heal, I had just made this into a personified meme.
I’m beginning to understand this is part of the work of enneagram learning. For a while we walk around as personified memes, laughing at our weaknesses and overplaying our strengths.
Though with dedication to further learning, personal practice, and self-compassion, we begin growing, and then the parts of ourselves we had hoped to avoid forever become unavoidable. This is exactly how I begrudgingly embraced the word “Desire” as my word for 2024.
Paint swatches literally all over my main floor.
Back to the paint. A week after painting the sloppy sample rectangles all over my house I found myself standing in my living room staring at them with a pit in my stomach.
For an entire week, I was trying to convince myself that one of these colors had to work. But deep down, I didn’t want any of them.
A more normal person would have just taken their happy butt back to the hardware store for new paint swatches without thinking twice about it. But me, picking at this uncomfortable growing edge of mine, stood in my living room, pit in my stomach, spiraling.
“I failed at picking paint. I can’t even figure out what color I like on a wall. And it’s barely a color anyway. I can’t even pick a shade of WARM GRAY to put on my wall. This is so Millennial basic. I can’t even be Millennial basic. I’ve wasted $21 and a ton of time. I might as well get the Ice Sculpture Blue out of the basement and cover all of these useless squares that are screaming about my failures.”
Y’all, my little 9 heart was clawing for her comfort space again. Demanding that I just vanish. Stop trying. Stop wanting. Stop trying to make a change! Get back under your blanket and become one with the chaise lounge, woman, because THIS. IS. TOO. HARD!
It was about this time that my dear husband came down and joined me in my wall staring. He stood there silently for a few seconds, looked over at me, and said, “So we need to go pick out some new colors, don’t we? I’m not loving any of these.”
Like a movie where the main character gets sucked back into their normal timeline, my brain warped back into that moment in my living room, a bit stunned and embarrassed at my own private spiral.
“Yeah, I think we do need to get more swatches,” I said.
“I think we’re close,” Marc said, “this one is almost right. It’s just a little too brown.”
“Yep. Too brown. If it were just a little more gray it would be perfect.”
Killing time in Lowes while waiting for a paint chip = Insta Story
Fast forward a day or so and I’m standing in Lowe’s waiting for Marc and Isaac to show up with the paint chips I forgot at home. I paced and looked at the colors, trying to find one that seemed close to the color on my wall at home but more grayish.
Earlier that day I had reentered the headspace of “How dare you desire!” AGAIN. I had asked permission approximately 45 million times to run to Lowes and find a new swatch — permission I never needed to ask for in the first place. I finally left the house only to pull into the Lowe’s parking lot 15 minutes away from home without the “just a little too brown” paint chip. Yet again this thing I wanted and didn’t even need was inconveniencing the person I love most - #enneagram9nightmares.
Marc showed up to Lowes with said paint swatch and we quickly chose two more colors and bought sample jars right away. Fourteen more dollars I might be flushing right down the toilet. The lump in my throat at the check-out line over $14 made me feel small and like I had never even heard the words “self-compassion” before.
We finally made a choice after painting 2 more swatches in 8 different places and consulting my friend who has painted more houses in her lifetime than anyone ever should. When she visited to see our paint predicament she chuckled about our anxiety surrounding the paint color choice. Like any good enneagram 8 friend would, she said to us, “Hey if you end up hating it, you can just paint over it! Who cares?!” Cue jaws and shoulders relaxing.
Touching up second hand furniture for the living room project.
I’ve made a lot of progress this year as I’ve practiced paying attention to my desires. I can honestly say that it’s gotten a little easier for me to name what I want and even ask for it.
What the experience of picking a paint color has shown me is that I still don’t feel the freedom to go all in on my desires. I disallow my desires from being an inconvenience or a cost to myself or others. I find myself downplaying how important something feels to me. I can say “Hey I’d really like to paint the walls,” but actually buying the sample jars hurts.
• • • • • • •
“Bonni, you used the word excited just then. You never use passionate words when you are talking about your work or your calling. I am paying attention to the strength of that word choice right now and you should too.”
My spiritual director’s words slapped me right in the face. I’m not free to desire deeply. To let my passion loose. I am restricted, bound up, protected, and palatable. I can finally know what I want, but I won’t let myself have it.
Don’t you love how one growing edge leads to another? I know, me neither.
The photo I took the moment we got the shelves up on this freshly painted wall. Poor lighting, full hearts.
So today I’m holding celebration in one hand and awareness of what’s next in the other. 2024 was a year of meaningful growth in a very foggy area of my life. I have learned practices that clear the cobwebs from my desires and allow me to truly see what it is I’m wanting - big or small.
And now I see 2025 is calling me deeper, calling me toward freedom. Freedom to let those desires unashamedly into the light. Freedom to care deeply and risk wildly. Freedom to let myself be seen in a more authentic and compelling way.
So here’s to 2025 being a year of freedom. Freedom to care and to be wrong about it. Freedom to feel deeply, love wildly, and enter the room boldly. Freedom to fail. Freedom to express myself in new and old ways. Freedom to succeed. Freedom to be invited and celebrated and freedom to be rejected and criticized.
It all sounds terrifying and exciting. But you know me, I love a good paradox.
Do you want to try a Word of the Year practice in 2025, but you’re not sure where to start?
I’m offering a limited number of Word of the Year Discovery Sessions for only $50. Here’s what you get:
1 hour to share your journey, words you're considering, and what growing edges in your life you're hoping to address in 2025. We’ll work to narrow things down to 1-2 words with meaningful definitions in our time together.
3 check in questions based on your word that you can use again and again throughout the year.
A short prayer or blessing written for you based on the word you choose.
First dibs to any virtual events I host in 2025 where we spend time intentionally reflecting on how our word is forming us as the year goes on.
Grab a session today, because they are selling! Only 8 spots are left.
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