Getting the Best Windows (It's a Process)

Is there any doubt the timing of these new windows?

I sit on my pillowy tan couch looking at a wall "in process" and these pretty new windows hung by my hardworking, talented husband and it all starts making sense.

Our Living Room has been "in process" since January. I had no idea until we started that it was going to become a project. And this year, it's been a rough one. Not necessarily a great time for room remodeling.

But like many things, one necessary change led to others and pretty soon we were re-doing the whole room — one wall at a time.

The once bare trees now wave their green leaves at me and the flowers once dormant are in full blossom in the garden and we're finally down to the last wall.

The original metal windows received their eviction notice and it was time to go. A wall once cold and drafty to be given a new, insulated life — and brand new windows.

Anyone who has ever experienced any kind of home construction knows the challenging process. Demolition and disarray to make room for something better. Dirty and messy and chaotic, at times, in a charted process to be renewed.

And my heart is struck by a parallel.

I've been living with cold, drafty metal windows for too long. I've kept them because for the most part they worked — kept the weather at bay. And I knew the new window payoff wouldn't come without a price.

I cannot present my inadequacies to God and ask that He fix them in me and still remain mess and chaos free. In order to have "the best" windows, the old ones have to be removed. And the inside wall needs work. With strength and determined labor everything must be ripped down to bare. And it's going to get messy.

And sometimes, as with windows, it leaves a gaping hole.

The wind blew in and thwapped the protective tarp around, and for a short time we were exposed and cold. But I knew it wouldn't be for long.

I see this process of demolition and change and it feels disruptive —
unsettling. I was anxious for the new windows to be mounted in that empty, vulnerable space so we could feel protected from the outside once again.

But I know. I feel it. The reason the ripping and tearing and exposing is so necessary.

It's the only way to better best.

I am under construction. He's been taking me down to bare so I can see what's going on in there. So I might be willing to see the rotting boards and the lacking and the draft. And I don't like feeling undone. I long for the resolution of a project completed.

But I know He won't leave me like this — unfinished. And when He's done with this wall I will be better for it,

and perhaps ready, to move onto the next one.


Linking today with the Soli Deo Gloria Party at Finding Heaven.