Keeping Our Heads Above Water - Chapter 30

“Father,
Break my heart for what breaks Yours
Give me open hands and open doors
Put Your light in my eyes and let me see
That my own little world is not about me.”
― Matthew West

The sun is coming up...the misty fog is lifting off the lake and I'm sitting here....on our own dock....at this very moment.  The chi-chi birds are nose-diving Kruger-the-1-claw cat beside me as we both sit here watching the sky change colors. 

 

WE - ARE - HOME

I won't lie.  I silently questioned whether this day would ever come. A week ago today,  in the rain (of course!), we moved for the third time since the end of December....but this time, back into our own home...with floors, walls and a toilet.

I've struggled over this past week with how to describe this monumental moment to you.  There's so many things I want to share with you....the anxiety, the tears, the anger, the FEAR, the toll its taken on my husband's health.....but then I realized these were all things from Me and not from God.  It's too much about us and not enough about Him.  I think that's why I will be painting this Matthew West quote on a wall somewhere on our brand smackin' new sheetrock:

"Father, break my heart for what breaks Yours.

Give me open hands and open doors 

Put Your light in my eyes and let me see

That my own little world is not about me."

When your life gets displaced for a moment in time.....whether its the loss of a job, a death, or even a dang flood.....it's so easy to justify carrying the badge of "Whoa is me".  We say to anyone who'll listen, "Poor me....how will I ever get past this?"  We make it all about us.  But it's not.....it's really not.  This 5-6 months of "inconvenience" for us is a simple bleep on the radar in relation to our eternity....our month-of-Sundays....our forever. 

Trust me, it's been a roller coaster ride reminding myself daily this won't last forever....I have cried tears of "Whoa is me" most all of the 157 days since The Flood.....and like the chapter of a book you can't wait to end, we can see the final paragraphs of this chapter we are living coming to a close.

Our chapter isn't quite finished yet, though......there is still a lot of work to do and we are living in only 1/2 of the house right now.  If you drew a straight line down the middle of our house, we are living in the almost-completed West Wing.....the East Wing is still under construction with sawhorses, paint cans and boxes of 350' of left-over wood flooring.  It's not at all uncommon to race from the West Wing to the East Wing in your pajamas, while dodging wood-sawing-contractors, to get your underwear out of the master bedroom closet.   We are strangely feeling like Shelley Long and Tom Hanks in the movie, "The Money Pit".......

There is still beadboard to paint (ughhh).....cabinets to clean....light fixtures to hang.  But we are closer today than we were yesterday.  And tomorrow.....yep...we'll be a couple sentences closer to the end of this chapter than we are today. 

Thank you for praying for us.  Thank you for sharing how our Flood has helped you in your own flood and thank you for continuing to live this chapter right alongside us.

The sun WILL come out tomorrow......