We’re in the middle of renovating our soon to be home. It’s an interesting thing to work with others on how to rehab a 1954 home. We love the bones of the old girl, she’s up on a hill, surrounded by trees and you can see the stars at night. As we’ve worked with a few contractors to seek opinions we’ve had many come and go evaluating what was needed. The old girl is in terrific need of attention. She’s had a few hard years before being lost by her previous owners. The symptoms of why are in the house too. Each room has had money spent on surface improvements. New Paint, fresh trim, and new carpets, however her core needs were not handled. The outside had green grass, fresh driveway chat, but she the cosmetics didn’t cure the core of her problem. She had rot under the surface.
The more I work and help remove the beautiful walls, the trims and the embellishments to reveal what was obviously rotten, the more I am intrigued with how often this is how it is with people too. Adornments are purchased, hair is coiffed, clothes are purchased, but ultimately our hearts and minds are withering unless core emotions are dealt with. It’s often like our home’s washroom too, we have to tear down to the core to replace what is festering, rotting, or making us sick before we get better. Simply covering it up will only look good, but one day our health gives way or our behavior costs our daily living in ways we prefer not to pay.
What is festering in your life? As we removed the washroom walls, the sinks, the stools, the bathtub to the sub flooring it all looked good. We thought perhaps only one hole was the issue, but my husband encouraged us to remove the sub flooring too. Just to be safe. Oh how glad I am that he did, for the joists, the very things that hold the flooring and people safe, were rotten from a slow water leak, so much so that a 2 x 10 board could have been eaten with a spoon. It was an instant visual of how holding on to negative emotions slowly eats away at our health, our blessings, and our functions. It had taken 58 years for that slow drip to destroy the life of the joist, but it was irreversible damage. Only a change of board could change the process along with a repair to the pipe.
What are you slow dripping into your life? What mode of thinking, of action, or doing is truly slowly destroying a life you’d prefer to live? I know for me personally, my focus is on better fuel for my body. Watching my father’s last few weeks, he had fought cancer valiantly on all fronts, but the last three weeks he chose to eat sugar again…in a “it’s not going to matter” concept. Let me tell you, ice cream was his weapon of choice, and in those three weeks I saw just how sugar fuels cancer, how eating too much of it accelerated his unhealth. It was an unforgettable physical example of why eating right matters. For three years he had managed his cancer with healthy food choices, and maintained slowing down the sickness, but just 2 days after eating heavy sugar, he was completely different. Anger is the same way for many people. Anger becomes the protective weapon, their go to boundary to keep people out, but often anger is based in fear and those emotions ultimately rot the soul, create unhappiness and bitterness in the heart. Exercise, uh hmmm…or lack of it, is a slow drip in my life. This week with the snow in Alabama I have been out and active with our seventeen year old daughter each day for a good while playing. The joke of it? I talk myself out of doing something I LOVE to do! How important that time together has been, but also the slow drip of a sedimentary life has been stopped.
Our home has new joists this morning and I have a new perspective on getting past the decorating of my life and making sure, like we did our new home, that my life’s toxic drips are found and solved. Personally I’d prefer not to spend my life waiting for the bottom to fall out. I probably won’t stop doing all the things I am choosing to reduce in my life today or tomorrow, but each small specific step accomplished adds value to my day. Are you working on stopping some drips in your life? Perhaps your drip is financial, perhaps your drip is relational peace, perhaps your drip is overcoming fear. Whatever your drip is, I encourage you to look past what you’re seeing, to dare to look past your go to’s of dressing up your life and just look deeper. It may be like us, you have been covering up your drip so long, you don’t see what it’s truly about any more. Personally, I realized after the drips were uncovered, that in my own life an excuse or three were being made on the same scale, that I had become comfortable with the cover story instead of digging past why I was allowing unhealth in my life. Is it time you remove your cover story and start the excavation processes that allow your best life to work too?
Sweetie,
As I read your touching first paragraphs, …”the trims and embellishments to reveal what was obviously rotten, the more I’m intrigued with how often this is with how often this is with people too,” I immediately thought about how it relates to the beautifully coiffed, manicured, designer dressed folks I know. They spare no expense, engage all their resources perfecting the outside. Then I sit down to a meal with them and I’m shocked, truly shocked at what they put into their bodies.
So when your writing continued about your father’s ice cream/sugar as his “weapon of choice,” well, I nearly bawled. Yes, I felt your pain watching him change his attitude from 3 years of healthy choices to, pulling the trigger.
I too, prefer not to spend my life waiting for the bottom to fall out of my most precious stewardship, the temple I will live in until I die. And it IS a difficult task. That much I concede.
But as you so eloquently expressed, “It has taken 58 years for that slow drip to change the life of the joist.” So it is with our bodies.
I’m proud, humbled, and nurtured within your expressive voice, dear heart…
What a beautiful testament to the powerful need we each have to truly mend what’s broken, shattered, or even only slightly bent within us. Thank you so much for sharing this poignant illustration with us!