creaky doors
New carpet was installed over the creaky stairs running up the middle of our old Illinois prairie farmhouse today, adding some warmth and eliminating some noise. Thankfully, the old doors off the second-floor landing still squeak when opened so we will still know when someone is up at night, but the stairs will no longer be what gives her away. Carpeting the stairs finishes the second-floor remodel, a big milestone since we began renovations just over five years ago.
In each step of the completed renovations, we've tried to do them with both design and efficiency in mind - make the house softer, warmer, quieter, and more gentle, and also make it beautiful. The children's rooms are lovely, with lots of blankets and plush carpet, but a lot of very cold air still gets in the window frames so in the boys' room especially, my husband doesn't consider the project done yet. I climbed our newly-carpeted stairs to tuck them all in to cozy beds under very cold windows (but of course, you couldn't have cozy without the cold for contrast anyway). We said prayers and I slipped down the stairs, quietly for the first time ever.
Sometimes I wonder why we did it this way - why we bought a drafty old farmhouse with need of a lot of sweat equity instead of a tight brick ranch on some street in town (there are plenty of those locally). It's not really a question of the house itself - but more a question of lifestyle and dreams. Why did we decide to pursue this one? Is it ok that we did? Should we have instead poured time and money into something else? What if it's all a mistake? What if we're missing it?
I especially worry about priorities during weeks like this one, where weights that people around us are bearing seem so thick and heavy you wonder if they might fall from whatever is tethering them... weeks like this one where I'm scared to scroll through Grant's texts for fear of awareness of some new, unanswerable question, painful experience, life-altering need in church mission work, like they all are. Fear of awareness is a new one for me altogether, a painful reminder that adulthood isn't childhood. My children want to know everything... I, on the other hand, am taking steps this year to actually block information out of my life. The weights are so numerous and so crippling.
But I know isolation and ignorance don't lead to internal peace. In fact, internal peace comes from exactly the opposite place of that - asking and seeking and knocking and knowing. Jesus has all the strength we need, and we need only ask.
A friend is going through an excruciating trial right now. If I were her, I'd be tempted to draw within myself, hunker down, deal with it, and hopefully emerge unscathed on the other side. She's doing the exact opposite - reaching out, asking for help, sharing her need, vulnerably opening her heart and life. She's doing it the right way, because His strength is Life. The answers cannot be found within ourselves.
We don't have to have the answers, or provide the resources that we don't have to fix the problems we don't really understand. But we do have to have the humility and trust to take those needs to Jesus.
If my priorities are misplaced, the house project is not the problem, but only the manifestation of it. Where is the strength, the direction, the years of leading and guidance, the financial means, the provision of skills and time... where is that all coming from? It's not coming from within us. That's where the idolatry threatens to take root. It's coming from God - who placed us on this planet with hopes and purposes greater than ourselves, hopes and purposes designed to keep us moving when hopelessness might otherwise prevail, and remind us that redemption of all things is possible.
The house is in it's proper place now, I think, and it is quiet, with little heads tucked into little beds. Tomorrow is a new day and even the darkness is a reminder that our strength comes from rest - both physically and spiritually. The pursuit of things we've thought about - dreams worked for, not worshipped - positions us to think about the next thing to think about. We can walk through doors because we know the One who has the power to shut them. We can pray about doors because we know the One who has the power to open them. And we can find a new appreciation for creaky doors, because they are the ones that you kind of saw coming, are not unfamiliar, and don't take you as much by surprise. They are the doors that are consistent in our lives, routine and default. They open and close almost imperceptibly because we are so accustomed to them in our lives. The house project is a creaky door for us - a way we've chosen to live almost without choosing, because it is so much a part of who God has made us to be. The creaky doors that open - they are the ones that remind us of how old and strong, and how unchanging and predictable, and how trustworthy and true, is the voice of the Creator and Redeemer God that we serve.
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