D. Barbara McWhite grew up in York County, S.C., and lives in Orange Park, Fla., with her husband and cat. Her column is published here each Tuesday. Opinions expressed are solely her own.

I like to paint. I have painted every room in my ten-year-old house more than once. The one room that I can’t seem to get right is the one I live in the most, my family room.

In my quest for the perfect color, I knew I wanted a muted yellow. I wanted a color that said, "Welcome in." Instead, when I painted the room what I got was more like stepping out into a July sun after having your pupils dilated. It was staggering.

So I bought more paint. I tried again. Too dark. More paint. Too pale. Too brown. Too Orange….

Pretty soon I had enough paint in my garage to open my own paint store. So, I decided I would need to mix my own "custom color." Sometimes I concocted what was, by night, sort of close to the desired color, but in the morning light, it looked ghastly. Others looked ghastly when they first rolled on.

After more than a few attempts to get the color right, I became the family joke.

My family members knew that if they called me on any given day, I would likely be painting. They told me that I had so much paint built up on the walls of my house that I had considerably reduced the square footage of my home.

So I went underground with my secret addiction. I would lie to my family members who called asking what I was doing on weekends. "Oh, not much," I would say as yellow paint dripped from my roller.

My latest attempt to get it right was this past weekend. After long and careful consideration I left the store with a bucket of paint that I was sure would speak to my soul. But like the traitors before it, that bucket proved to be an impostor. It was close to the color I wanted but not quite there.

So out from the garage came the numerous "ghosts of paintings past." I was determined to tweak the paint a bit and brew up a batch of paint that would be exactly what I was looking for.

Wearily, I stood over the kitchen cabinet, with a dozen or so cans of paint in front of me - cans half full of strange mixtures and cans full of failed attempts. One small can was an awful monstrosity of green, brown and God-knows-what in a bucket that I had previously marked "bad." I stood surrounded by all the mess, and before I knew it, I mistakenly dumped the whole can of "bad" into my almost perfect blend of paint. I almost cried.

Then, a voice inside me that surely belongs to Pablo Picasso, said, "Stir it up and see what it looks like."

And so I did.

And wonder of all wonders after all my attempts to make the right color; I had stumbled on it by accident. My perfect yellow, like silky buttered caramel... Aaahhhhh!

At last, after all my trying, success was only achieved when I allowed the bad to become a part of the formula for perfection.

I remember when, as a young woman, I was going through a particularly difficult time. I called my father for words of comfort and advice.

"If you allow Him to,” my dad said, “the Lord can take what the devil meant for a stumbling block and turn it into a stepping stone.”

How reassuring it is to know that there is a master plan, even for the "bad” in our lives.
And as I enjoy the beauty of my perfect yellow room, I hear my father’s voice again, and once again I embrace the wisdom of his words.

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