Ah, the best laid plans... So the carpet people did show up; and they did a really good job on the bedroom; and they were really nice guys. The only problem turned out to be some worker at the factory, who managed to shave a good foot off the length of the family-room berber, thus leaving us five inches short of a new room! Now it'll be a week until we get the house all put together again.
However - and emerging out of its recent feng shui slump - our bedroom really does look amazing. We took the opportunity to paint the walls, changed some of the layout, and re-purposed a few items of furniture from elsewhere in the house. Rebekah has a natural flair for decorating and completed the kind of makeover most HGTV shows would doubtless pay to feature.
Scout, meanwhile, spent the day frolicking with her friends at the beauty parlor. The old carpet, had - let's face it - serious Eau-de-Dog issues, so it made good sense to get Her Royal Pooch-ness sanitized at the same time. It's easy to tell she turned out just fine.
I've decided that owning a home is pretty much the same as painting the Golden Gate Bridge. The moment you think you're finished, then sure enough something new crops up... or you discover that the first remodel you did has faded, or worn out... or you have to double back and re-do a project you can't believe you missed the first time around.
I know people who try to move every five years or so just to avoid that kind of process.
Come to think of it, I know preachers who deliberately relocate every five years or so because a similar dynamic is at play. It's either the church building, the work that's required to forge through some challenge, or a new layer of depth in relationships - and it all begins to look too daunting to deal with so they move on (looks like this is an entry I'll need to re-post at my "Preacher's Husband" blog!).
But life is process, and it's the process that provides so much of the depth and definition that make it beautiful.
Here's a short story to illustrate. Several years ago we met two couples who both lived in very nice homes in the same neighborhood.
- In one house the floor-plan rambled, involved at least five different flooring surfaces, and the design was constantly subject to tweaking. Decorating evolved around wildly varied styles, obscure pieces of art collected while traveling, antique family pieces and photographs etc. There were books everywhere, and there was no way to predict what the next room might look like based on the one you were in. Change was ubiquitous and there was always a drop-cloth and a tool-box in play somewhere.
- The other home had been recently gutted in response to a divorce. The man remarried, remodeled, and then went to a huge furniture store with his new wife. They purchased complete rooms of furnishings, including pictures for the walls and designer-coordinated home accents. The house was gorgeous; everything matched; it was a showcase... It had no soul.
Bottom line; if you want everything ready done and pre-finished... if you want to wake up every day with no problems to solve and no mess to clean up... if you want sterility and predictability and no bumps in the road to distract you from, well, whatever it is that you'd do in such a life... Then you're welcome to it.
But such a life won't have much to do with the dynamic, creative, challenging interactive dance we're caught up in. And I don't think you'd like it all that much after a few days.
- DEREK
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