Who knew I’d be writing so much about our home renovations this week…
Guess I should have known, because so often the Lord teaches me through things I can see in the natural, and things I go through in life—He often teaches me about the “unseen” through what I can see. ✍?
In case you didn’t already know from reading the previous posts this week (Part 1 and Part 2), we’ve been working on another short round of home renovations this week, specifically our bedroom, and also some to the back entrance way of the house, on the back wall of where we are closing in the second doorway to the bedroom.
Our house will have many, many more phases of renovation, but we’re having to split everything up into smaller projects whenever we can, just to be able to live, and also work, and also rest, in this house as we’re working on the renovations.
So here’s the thing... our plan was to spend 1 solid week on this project, and get everything wrapped up and finished in this particular room so that we can put our house back in order before the following week. ?
(Actually, that may have been more my plan than Jason’s. ?)
…So we can be out of the mess, and so we can be “back to normal” work and life the following week….
Nice and clean again…
Well, that’s not how things always happen. ?
Life doesn’t always stick to my idea of a good plan. (Thank God!)
Even if I think I have a good, and doable plan in place, that’s not always going to end up being the plan.
Because well— sometimes I might have a faulty “plan”…. a “plan” that’s not really a good plan, or a doable plan…. or perhaps it’s really not the main thing God had in mind for the whole project in the first place, and I’m just not able to see it yet.
When renovating an old house, there are just going to be a lot more things that you find under the surface that need to be fixed and repaired than what’s expected… and there’s going to be a mess. There’s going to be some things you get a little bit hung up on from time to time. There’s going to be some things you have to work around… and no matter how much I want it all to fit within my perfect little plan that I’ve made to keep things “allllll under control”… it’s just not always going to happen. In fact, the harder I plan things like this, the more likely things are to burst right out of the seams.
And if I fight that…. if I kick and scream because it’s not all fitting into my idea of a manageable project… a polished plan, then will I really gain the valuable lessons and the deep things God is wanting to do in the process of it all?
There’s always something deeper. There’s always another layer.
There’s always a lesson to be found inside of the things we experience in the natural.
And it’s always more about what’s unseen, than what we can actually see.
Could it be, that the process of “renovating a house” is far more about what we learn from that process, and how we learn to work with others through that process, than it ever is about having a perfectly finished house by a specific deadline… so that we can live a “normal” and “under control” life? ?
Is it more about getting the house finished and built and done, and getting it checked off the list, or is it more about the lessons we learn and gain in the middle of it?
Is it more about becoming and learning to become a “house builder” from building a house, and taking the time to fix what needs repairing, or is it more about finishing up the house by a certain goal time and not doing as good a job on the little things, the deep things, that need to be done?
Talking with the Lord one day a little while back, I said to Him,
“Father, I just want a finished house! I just want floors that don’t have splinters. I just want to not live in dust and be able to actually have people over to our home. I just want to be able to function and live and rest…. in this house.”
And He quickly reminded me that He never promised me a perfectly finished house. ??✨
He never promised me a normal life.
But He did promise to lead me in the way I should go.
He did promise to transform me, to heal broken things in my life…
He did promise to shape me, to grow me… ??
He did promise to never give up on me. ?
He did promise to walk with me through it all. ?
And that—He is doing. ?✍?☀️
Thank You, Father. ?
-Heather ?