sydney's grace...: under construction

we've now been in the new 'old' house for 7 weeks. the first 3-4 weeks were hard pressed labor working days, no stopping, my mom came to help, lots of friends and community over here helping us get demo work done and floors laid and painting the whole house, storage units emptied and furniture moved. the last few weeks were met with a surprise emergency hospital stay for ian, who came down with cellulitis and staph in his knee and had to have surgery. ca-razy times. the last week or so, we'd look around at the house, so still unfinished and under construction, boxes abounding, dust and nails and drywall missing, with money that's run out for no room for completing projects and a bum knee that now keeps ian resting rather than working on projects at all......and get so discouraged. and antsy and restless. unsatisfied. and discontent. so we would start praising:

praising God for his faithfulness in simply just getting us in this house.

praising God for the community and help that he sent us to help us get started.

praising God for his provision and guidance this summer in keeping us patient on the waiting path.

praising God for his mercy in taking care of ian and helping him to heal and recover in a scary health scare.

praising God that while so many things are unfinished about this house, at least we have it...at least we have a place to live.

ALL those things are swimming in head and heart these days...they are. and we talk about them with those who ask and we let them remind us daily of his grace.

many share with us how it took them years to complete their home restorations of old fixer-upper homes...some are still in the process....be patient they say, this can't be done overnight.....i knew this truth, i knew what we signed up for, it was to be a long drawn out process, lots of weekends working and laboring hard to bring an old dull dirty empty house back to life, with love. and attention, work and care.

somehow, tho.....all the unfinished house stuff soon began to flood and overwhelm my heart. so much that it overtook the importance and focus of my unfinished heart. i found myself more worried about the appearance of our house than the appearance of my heart...the epi-center of my faith....

He then began to sweetly open my eyes to some picture stories for my heart:

dirt. everywhere. it comes up from the floor vents and we've yet to fix the problem. the nasty undone floors help us not care i think, but the dirt is daily. and it builds up. and we get lazy and don't want to have to vacuum everyday so it looks like this. it bothers me. madly. enter irony....YET shouldn't the daily grime that fills my heart be more important? if i don't keep short accounts and practice self-control and focus on truth, my heart can easily build up like this dirty floor and instead of maintaining daily, i am needing a whole shop vac of an emotional day or week or season even cleaning up the mess.

no lid on this toilet. totally exposed and nasty toilet from 1971. i went and bought the sweetest gray ruffled shower curtain for this bathroom. hoping it would detract from the toilet and floor and make it feel more homey and lovely. i love that curtain and i have such dreams for that space but i swear that it's just about the same as putting lipstick on a pig right now. it's still a pig. no amount of pretty curtains will take one's eyes off the dirty floors and retro tan lid-missing toilet. YET isn't that what i do? i "apple-staple" as paul tripp says, fresh red apples stapled onto a dying fruit tree that will never bear the shiny delicious fruit ever. with so many ways i quick-fix and bandaid little moments with fake fruit instead of taking the time and energy and heart work to truly get the job done, the right way....

a yard full of dirt and goat heads. BOTH that come back in the house every time the boys play outside. getting a drink of water at night sometimes means stepping on these nasty suckers barefoot. or one of the kids will find them in their sock. or their blankets. i get so mad when i am pulling them out of feet and socks 4x a day. YET again, it reminds me that my heart can be pull of pride and selfishness, envy or jealousy, or many other goat heads pricking the heart....i should be as vigilant with those to remove them daily from my heart.....they should be painful to the state of my heart, just as the real goat heads are to my feet.

a garage full of boxes and baseboards and baskets and bins of things that have overtaken a simple life but yet were paid to be put into storage all this summer. so many things needing to be purged...things i am holding onto. things that need to be sorted through and gone through, kept or thrown away but definitely put into order....baseboard project overtaking space and walkway, reminding us daily as we leave, that there is a huge hindrance in our way AND a big project still left undone..hard to walk out in the garage right now and feel any peace looking at this mess. YET isn't my heart ironically similar? why do i let my heart fill with so much 'junk', counterfeit crap, needing to be purged, and i don't take the time to clean out and simplify, reorder and purge? why don't i see the hindrances of sin and pride and such standing in my way daily or let them 'bother me' so... still so much left undone in the refining heart process and yet this mess sweetly now reminds me of this truth of the heart. not just my garage.

the door is the first thing you see when you enter a home....it is the welcome center. our door is to a house that had been vacant for years and with lock boxes galore and wear and tear, holes and broken glass and mismatched handles, frames coming apart, and needing a fresh coat of new paint to bring it back to life. it makes me sad to come back home to this door every time, it looks sad and drab and reminds me of the lady who used to live here, who let her house go.....it's marked with no attention and abuse and neglect. YET isn't my heart that way sometimes? don't i neglect the most important thing of mine? out of my mouth flows the heart, don't i abuse that sometimes and neglect to give it the most important attention of all? a fresh coat of truth each day for my aching heart is way more important than a gallon of benjamin moore.

unfinished window sills and floors in both bathrooms, reminding me daily when i see them and walk on them that my feet are once again dirty, even after a fresh shower...can't keep them clean and they just present the picture of under construction all the time....so frustrated sometimes that these two places in our home are ones that guests use and i am embarrassed to let them see our mess. and i get tired of re-washing my feet ALL the time. YET shouldn't i be more embarrassed or uneasy to let GOD and others see my ugly heart? my lack of self-control in patience or gentleness with my kids or husband? the pride or envy that may show in a complaining heart? shouldn't i focus on the need to daily be transforming my-re-washing-needed- flesh-heart with the word, it needs cleaning daily with truth...this sweet project of floors remind me now to be more disgusted or unsatisfied with a messy ugly heart more than pretty missing wood and absent tile?

many times we've grown restless and weary, asking ourselves if we really were crazy to take on this house....everytime, we process and look around, heart swells with his faithfulness to us, the beautiful vision that he gave us for this home, to restore it and bring it back to life, the wonderful space we have now for our family to grow in, that which we didn't have before...and we both nod. and smile. and know. that this process is just that. a process. it's not a HGTV 30 min house crashers episode where it's done and finished in half an hour. oh how we wish it was that way. and yes life, oh how we all wish it were that easy right? we wish it were an easy fast fix rather than working hard and waiting longly for a finished product.

i think our hearts in this spiritual life are the same way. we want a devotion or conference or retreat to seal the deal for our hearts and make us renewed and be done. we want to have a great sunday experience and have it last the week or find inspirational books or blogs to breathe new life into us and have it "stick." we want all our circumstances to be just so, just right, so that we can finally exhale and be ok and just enjoy life.....we want to have the now not yet NOW. and be done.

but we can't. we are all a work in progress. it's our purpose here....transforming daily to be more like Him. (Romans 8:29)

And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ. Philippians 1:6

it takes time and daily heart-work, dying to self daily and time spent with the One who truly knows our ugliest hearts and chooses to love us anyway to show us such grace. and He work in us. and for us. and to see that transforming love chasing after us should change our desires, our wants, our needs...our expectations.

the valley of vision prayer on desires blessed me with words to pray out loud with today:

we are new creations in him, and he continues to make all things new by refining us in trials and meeting us with his word and transforming our minds...just as this old house is "new" for us, the home still needs remodeling and restoring. it does need to be livable. it will take time, patient months and long suffering maybe years, but it would not be fruitful to leave it as is, it would not be enjoyable, lovely or encouraging or glorifying to HIM to just sit in squaller and say, oh well. it's too much work, guess we'll just live in it, all the mess is just too much work, we will settle to just live amongst it and be. we would never do that with our homes...we just don't....yet, why do we do that with our hearts?

and our marriages? and our relationships and parenting our children? how we take care of our bodies? our health?

and even then, there will never be the exact moment of "all done, it's perfect, we're done" with the house, and we definitely won't have that with heartwork either, not this side of heaven as least...(one day, yes, praise JESUS, Phil 1:6)...as long as we strive for perfection and a "completed-ness" on our own, that list will just keep growing. and so will our discouragement. because we must rely ONLY on His righteousness that is perfect and all done, that he has done the work (Isaiah 53:5) and that is what we rest in. that's what makes our hearts rest in confidence of fullness. not the filling of other things, of closets and houses and bank accounts.....but in His steadfast love and abounding mercy....

so, as my eyes rove this house and all that needs to be fixed and done, all the things i want to buy and add to it, decorate with and pondering ways to improve it.....may my prayer be that ALL those things would diminish as i pray humbly to focus on the things that my heart needs instead. HIM.

that 'when i am full (in Him), i am free"...and that freedom looks like this: that my "eyes would not rove and my fleshly lusts would not rule, because my heart would be fat with the love of Jesus".....