My house is a mess.  Dust absolutely everywhere.  Disarray.  You might have been wondering “Where has she been?! Again!”.  I forgot to tell you that we were beginning a remodel last Friday.  It seems like old news since we’ve been investigating, acquiring bids, shelving some ideas, discovering new ones and walking through this tedious preparation process for over a year.  So, when the crowbars began to fly and the saws began to buzz last weekend, it wasn’t particularly eventful since we’ve become so familiar with The Plan. 

We bought our very affordable, very dated 80s-style home with the intent of doing some cosmetic updates.  No moving of walls or plumbing.  Sounds easy enough, right?  Right.  We would have liked it to be done by now, but there simply wasn’t a peace to commit and begin a project.  Estimates floored us.  Costs add up so quickly on stuff like this, don’t they?  We didn’t have joy to proceed with anything.  We met lots of wonderful and gifted people who were very gracious and accommodating.  They deserved to get the job, but we couldn’t afford them.  Our budget seemed impossible, but God knew.  He led.  We w…a…i…t…e…d.  We sought, we found, peace came.  And although the dust hasn’t settled yet, things are falling into place nicely.  Not perfectly because nothing is perfect this side of heaven (except perhaps a newborn baby, a fresh spring roll from Indochene in Tacoma , an August Puget Sound sunset…oops, rabbit trail!) but we have a solid sense of absolute peace.

We could have striven big-time to make this happen sooner.  There is a time to fight and claw to get to the goal, but there’s also a time to back off and wait.  The key for me is to be sensitive to my inner man - that voice inside - knowing in my ‘knower’ what time it is, and a big part of that is to sense a calm, certain, steady, tranquil ‘anchored-ness’ in my heart.  A green light to ‘go’!  Freedom from angst within.  Absence of mental conflict.  Chaos may be raging on the outside, but peace anchors me on the inside.

This has become a principle to guide me in my daily life.  If you’re around me for long, you’ll hear me say, “it’s just not the way of peace.”  It’s not consciously premeditated or staged, but automatic because it’s become my lifestyle.   Like when I say, “I’m craving Mexican food.”  Or, “Gregory Mira is such an amazing man.”

Phillipians 4:7 “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 17th, 2008 at 6:57 pm and is filed under Life in the Fishbowl: ministry wives, Mom's Home: domesticity, Parenting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.