Living in the Mess

Ash and I have just recently purchased our first home, and nothing could have prepared us for the work that would go into feeling settled. We bought a minor fixer-upper, thinking it would take us about a month to get the house the way we thought it should be. One problem with that naive train of thinking was money. We found out it takes a fair amount of money to do everything we want the way we want it.  Just like the HGTV shows, there are always unexpected expenses, and we definitely have been experiencing that.

Another deeper problem that we quickly realized when we bought the home is that we actually didn't know how we wanted the house to be fixed up. We didn't know what we wanted the house to look like, especially with the mess that we were living in. We thought we had a vision for the home, but we quickly found out once we actually moved in, that we, in fact, did not have a vision for the house.

We probably didn't want to hear it before we moved in, and maybe others tried to warn us, but the truth that we discovered was this:

We had to live in the mess of our home for a while in order see what we really wanted. 

I think this can be applied to our lives as well. I'm not advocating living life in a mess for an extended amount of time. However, I am saying that it might be okay to live in our mess for some time. If you were to come over to our house a year from now and it's still a mess, please ask me if there is something wrong with me. But if you were to come over a month from now, it might be okay and seem normal even for us to still be living in somewhat of mess in our home.

I compare my life to my current home. My life is messy. There are "walls" that need to come down and "floors" that need to be taken up. I know this is true, and I am aware of it. I also know that the house projects, my life so to speak, cannot be taken care of all at once. It will take resources, time, sweat, tears, honesty and much prayer. But that's okay, because the healthy, mature individual is not someone who constantly has his or her mind set on the destination, but the one who has their mind set on the process. In Christ, I believe I am being sanctified day by day. I can see the vision of what could be me, but I want to be more focused on the process. Even though I experience doubt, I hold to the promise "that he who began a good work in me will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus."

Borrow hope today.

P.S. We get new kitchen floors today :)

Zach