I can't let this last week slip past me without posting about the most recent milestone in our lives--our 25th anniversary!
Over the last year, I pondered over what we might do to celebrate such a milestone. We looked into a trip to Israel with our church, but with so many unknowns at the time surrounding our son David's graduation, it made any kind of planning rather difficult and complicated. Plus the last time we made a big plan around a big milestone, it didn't really go as planned or live up to any of our expectations--leaving a sour taste in our mouth rather than the fond memories we hoped to create.
So we decided to bite the bullet financially and hire Mike and Matt's business, Tipton Home Services, to get the ball rolling on the next stage of our house remodel rather than continuing to drag it out over a long period of time by doing little bits at a time as money, time, resources, energy, and optimum weather just happened to all coincide. That may take a few years, LOL.
Our actual anniversary came and went this past Wednesday. But with all the focus on the house, we didn't even get each other cards. Mike wrote me a sweet handwritten note from his heart, and I left little pre-made Scriptural love/encouragement notes for him all over the house to find in the morning. Then for dinner, we ate at Texas Roadhouse (of course) and then walked around SAM's Club to find new things for our house project. We then sat and had coffee at home and played cards, since it was pouring down rain. Our "big" gift, a new bathroom vanity, came in that day, but we couldn't haul it home for two more days because of the rain.
Currently, we're still living in a big mess at home, but it's finally starting to come together, and Mike really seems to be enjoying the messy process because he can see the finished product in his head. He and Matt do bathroom and kitchen remodels all the time and know what kind of transformation they can make happen, but I personally just have to close my eyes and hold my breath until we are out of the mess and can actually settle in. I have to pray for a grateful, patient, heart of contentment every day and to speak encouraging, edifying words to the man whose skillful hands are hard at work in this process.
To be honest, it's more than just a simple remodel like they're used to doing. This current project meant cutting up floors and digging down to the dirt. We literally had a digging party where my little nephews all came over with their little shovels and had a blast throwing all that dirt out the window. Then, of course, it rained for days and left a ton of mud all over. Once they dug a deep enough crawl space to put the plumbing and heating under the room, they took out the old joists under the house and put in new ones, then laid a new floor, and finally they moved on to leveling out the walls and framing out the room. Mike had to spend time in the attic getting all the electrical side in order, and hopefully soon we'll see some drywall go up on the walls. (I've been told that will be a whole new mess....as you can tell, this is definitely not my thing.) Even in hiring the company, it's still a lengthy job that won't be done for a few more weeks.
But it reminds me of the last twenty-five years that we've been married. Marriage is hard work, and quite frankly, it's messy. Really messy. And it's ugly more often than it is pretty. Sometimes you have to tear up the old floor, demolish what's currently standing, and rebuild something new with a new foundation to stand on. Sometimes you have to pull off the old drywall and paneling, get rid of the old, soiled insulation, and re-insulate with what God wants us to surround ourselves and insulate our lives with. It takes patience, perseverance, determination, and grace to get through the mess to the beauty. But like we learned in our ReEngage program a couple of years ago, if you give up too soon, you may have missed the best part that's still to come. I'm looking forward to seeing that soon in our house.
