Remodeling

Before

FINALLY! My old beige, drab kitchen is gone! Hallelujah!!

I love my kitchen. It is a wonderful kitchen and I am truly blessed to have it, so please don't get me wrong. When Rick and I moved into the house in 1987, I wanted a blue (my favorite color) kitchen. My dad sent me to a place to buy discount wallpaper and I dug through bins for hours. The best I could find was a beige wallpaper with small blue-gray flowers on it. OK, I could live with that above the chair rail if the wall below was painted that blue-gray. Well, the wallpaper went up, the wall below it was painted off-white and in the rush to move in, it was never repainted. For 23 years I never got around to painting my kitchen blue. Rick and I were newlyweds, then I had two jobs, then we had kids... and so on.

It's such a shame that I let 23 years go by without doing something in one weekend that would have made a difference in my life. The color blue calms me, brings me peace and joy. I have no doubt, it would have made a difference. To me, my kitchen was never finished. I got so busy doing the "next thing" that I never finished the "last thing."

Three years ago, our A/C drain clogged up and flooded the house. The insurance paid to replace the soaked carpet in our living room, hall, master bed/bath. By doing the work ourselves, we had enough money to install wood floor in our bedroom and ceramic tiles in the other areas. We even had enough to buy matching ceramic tile for the kitchen. I made up my mind that before the new tile went down, the wallpaper would come off and my kitchen would get painted. Well, we completed all the damaged areas to satisfy the insurance company; but with the holidays on the way, I called off the remodeling before the kitchen was started. We intended to pick it back up after the new year (3 years ago, remember?); but I kept finding excuses to not do it. Once again, getting busy with the next thing and leaving undone the last thing.

I believe that the main reason for my procrastination is that I hate for things to be torn up. I like for everything to be just so and in its place. Remodeling requires upheaval. Everything has to be moved out, cleaned out and ripped out in order to make it better.

Last week, Rick and I tore into the kitchen. We ripped off the wallpaper and scraped up the linoleum floor. It's a mess. But the walls are now BLUE! I'm already enjoying the peace.

It is so cathartic to strip something down to the very foundation. Stripping wallpaper to the sheetrock or scraping linoleum off to reveal the concrete underneath. Rick told me that we have to get all of the old floor off the concrete before we can lay the new tile. An uneven surface will cause the tile to break. I really enjoyed the process of stripping away the old. It was hard work and involved physical pain afterward; but I still enjoyed it. I don't like the disarray that my house is in at the moment - all the kitchen furniture in the living room. Tools everywhere. But I can live with it. I have a vision of what the finished product will look like. It's worth waiting for. It will be better than ever. I will not rush through it or leave it unfinished just to get to the next thing. I am willing to be patient and let patience have her perfect work.

Father, please help me to learn from the natural and apply these principles to the Spiritual. Thank you for loving me enough to strip me down to my foundation and rebuild me to be more pleasing to you than I have ever been before. I submit myself to your work and purpose in my heart to be patient during the process. I will not abort your work to run off after the next thing. I will not move furniture into the kitchen (the part of my life that is meant to nourish others) before you have painted it to your liking. 

Jesus, you are my foundation... my rock. It is so wonderful to sit with you again with all the veneer that was between us scraped away. I surrender that man-made artificial veneer, so that it may be replaced with fire-hardened tiles of porcelain - fine and pure. I bond myself to you in love, hope and faith. Amen.