change of plans

So, we bought the old house hoping hoping to be able to restore it.  We love the old.  We wanted the old.   The analogy of our life was so evident too: it needs a new foundation, but there's a lot of salvageable wood, and we can just lift it up and restore the foundation, right? And then restore on top of that.

But as we often find when we honestly open up to self-examination, it was over our heads.  The cost of trying to keep everything together and slip a foundation underneath was just too high.  So with the insight and advice of several trustworthy counselors, we instead decided to rebuild completely.  We went back and forth on this point for over a month, running different numbers, counting different costs, till we finally came to this conclusion.

A few days ago Roy pointed out to me, "ya know, I get it now.  The Lord knew this all along (of course) and he even showed me! Remember Haggai, which the Lord used to confirm to me what He was doing with us here while we were in escrow?  It says "rebuild" and I was thinking, "Yeah, whatever Lord, you mean 'restore' and 'remodel'.   I think I'll listen more carefully next time and let that weigh in heavier at the beginning!"  (I love the way our Daddy so gently leads and trains us to hear Him!)

We still wanted to salvage as much as we could, (and save money) (of course), so we did the demolition ourselves, board by board.  This was an awesome and beautiful experience, a time travel of sorts.  And it was incredible lessons.  There is a lot of precious and valuable wood that we were able to save, which we hope to incorporate into our new house.  But there was a hell of a lot more rotted, twisted and cracked then we first perceived.  There was so much to be discarded!  (There's another God story about that… about the people God brings alongside you completely miraculously to help you in this difficult task…)

So we realized, the analogy of our life just got deeper.  It's not just a prop-up-fix-the-foundation.  It's a board by board evaluation of every stud in our life (except for Roy…I try not to overanalyze him… he might be "a bit of a fixer-upper" but so am I…).   And as we examine, we can keep what's good and discard what's not.