As I write, I'm sitting in our snug living room, tea at hand, fire blazing, relishing the gleam of polished wood and the light scent of clean... Ah...perfection. At this point you should be hearing the screeching rewind of the tape. Yes, I'm sitting in our snug living room, tea at hand, fire blazing. But the rest? The rest is pure fiction - a happy place to which I escape in my hopeless attempt to resist writing this blog in the drywall dust which coats every surface, every item, every fiber of our humble abode. We are officially "UNDER CONSTRUCTION".The whole sad story began over a year ago when the room upstairs containing a bathtub and ONLY a bathtub, (Don't even get me started!) started to leak. So the dilemma was: do we create chaos to fix this "bathroom" or do we create chaos to make it into something that would actually be usable and add value to our home? We landed on the latter. We had the perfect plan (don't we always?). Except it wasn't. Fast forward through spring, summer, knee surgery and Haiti preparations - nothing. You guessed it, two weeks before Don was to travel to Haiti with "That All May See" and as I tottered on my new pins, the walls started tumbling down. Now, what feels like years later, the walls are up, the bathroom is taking shape and there is a whiff of hope that there actually may be an end point. There may actually be a functioning bathroom .... UPSTAIRS! There may actually be furniture under all that dust and I may, one day, sit down on the couch or the bed without convulsing with sneezes. The end product might eventually be worth the pain.
As our home has endured the paroxysms of renovation, I have felt similar reverberations as my character has been chiseled and pounded and shaved. For one who chases but never quite achieves the spotless, nigh on sanitary home of my childhood, the upheaval and chaos of the last few months has been approaching unendurable. But the timing of this mess, on the "heals" of major surgery, is completely within the Lord's hands and for some reason, the collision has been designed thus. A collision of my rights with reality.
So it's not just the walls that are under construction here. No, I find my character under construction; my contentment under construction; my ability to release every circumstance into His hands without grumbling or complaining under construction. As each day passes and the peace and order of "home" remain elusive, I am brought face to face with the dust and mold lying under the surface of ME.
Mercifully, as painful and frustrating as this process is, God's word assures me that
" ... God who began the good work within (me), will continue his work until it is finally finished on the day when Christ Jesus returns. (Phil 1:6 NLT)
While I am still dubious that there will be an endpoint to these earthly renovations, I look forward to the finished renovation of my character on that day! Until then, along with the apostle Paul and with the Spirit's help, I am learning
"... to be content [and self-sufficient through Christ, satisfied to the point where I am not disturbed or uneasy] regardless of my circumstances" (Phil 4:11 AMP)
Ummm.... does anyone have a vacumn? 😬
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