the workshop

Last winter, Ivory and I spent days in our unfinished basement moving things around, throwing things away, organizing, shifting, trying things, and re-organizing and re-shifting in order to carve out some usable space for a hand-me-down air hockey table and a workshop for the boys in one of the rooms. It was her gift to them and while I knew it would be valuable, I had no idea just how valuable it would be. It has become a place to neatly store leftover parts to anything, a place for the boys to experiment with tools, a place where tools are stored in a way that we can easily find them, a place for growth, learning, experimenting, building, trial-and-error, fixing, creating -- you name it, it happens in the workshop. Including, unfortunately, the use of half a tube of epoxy on a project that didn't require epoxy. Almost like throwing $8 in the trash. But anyway, the workshop is a place for all of those things. Currently someone is constructing a soccer goal down there for use outside this spring and summer.

The word "workshop" implies a place of learning, hands-on learning in particular. Maybe this happens to you too - where in wake of a bit of a failed experiment - relationally, physically, or otherwise - Satan begins to bring to mind all of the other failures too. Even from years before, he will bring them to mind, shed new light on things that I never felt shame over before but suddenly feel insecure about - knowing what I know now about a certain person, or a certain situation - what must they have been thinking or how must that have come across when I did that ten years ago?! And even worse - what am I doing now that I am going to just be mortified about in another ten years when I look back? It's one of the most debilitating feelings - makes me some days just want to curl up in a ball and not do anything. Which, of course, is exactly Satan's goal.

I'm forgetting that this is a workshop. This life is hands-on, trial-and-error, workshop. It is growth over time, building things that don't work and break and then using that information later in life to apply to something else that you never would have known was where you would use that information and isn't it something how when God is the leader of my thoughts and not Satan the accuser, everything that I learned painfully or that still makes me blush now actually are the very things that I'm using as stair steps to do higher-stakes things a little bit differently than I would have done without that knowledge.

Satan's workshop is a disorganized, chaotic array of misused tools with no batteries, full of confusion and lost opportunity. God's workshop, on the other hand, is tools in their place, ready for use, maybe needing the batteries charged or something because it's been a while since we brushed the dust off of that life lesson or that thought-process, but we're equipped. Equipped by past failure, maybe. Because that's a tool that God uses, because He is a Redeemer. He builds on what we have and works in us what we don't have and His strength we can do all things.

And so we have to be willing to build, even with only the limited knowledge we have right now. And we have to be willing to let other people build too. Even if they might make a mistake. Even if we know someone that could do it better sometimes. Sometimes we have to stand aside, and look not only for the people who are already equipped, but also who are willing to become equipped. Even if it's painful for them. Even if it's painful to watch. God is looking for that character trait and He loves it when His people are shapable and moldable, willing to trust Him with all that they have.

The girls and I were sorting clothes in their closet this morning and some of the things I sewed for them early on as a seamstress stress me out now. I'm like, why does this look so bad? All those unfinished seams... and seriously. That fabric. Why. But those were the seams that built my ability. Those were the practice things, the things that made it possible for me to sew harder things now. The patterns I sewed over and over and until I got better at it - those are the things that I can easily produce. Because we learn from our mistakes.

The finished soccer goal just made it upstairs out of the workshop. It is actually super impressive in design, but I think every single screw split out the wood around it. But it is still holding together! And it is still going to make a phenomenal soccer goal! In ten years, he will look at that soccer goal and say, wow. Embarrassing. Why did I do that that way? Why did I think this was good work?

But this is how he learns.

Welcome to the workshop, where you are His workmanship, created for good works.