The Patient Builder, or "Don't Fall SPLAT."

Do you remember (if you are from a southern, American, Christian home, or even once attended a VBS in such a place) that little song about the builders?  The words are from scripture, (Matt 7:24ff and Luke 6:46ff) but with a bit more onomatopoeia.  The song goes:

 

The wise man built his house upon the rock.

The wise man built his house upon the rock.

The wise man built his house upon the rock,

And the rains came tumbling down.

 

OH, the rains came down as floods came up (do the hand motions—you know you want to.)

The rains came down as the floods came up.

The rains came down as the floods came up,

And the wise man’s house stood FIRM.

 

Then, there’s the foolish man, same number of repetitions.

 

The foolish man built his house upon the sand….and the rains came tumbling down..and the foolish man’s house went SPLAT!

 

The lesson?  SO (third verse)…Build your house on the Lord Jesus Christ, and the blessings come tumbling down...OH, the blessings come down as the prayers go up.  Repeat as necessary.

 

I like the song.  I loved singing SPLAT ridiculously loud in a church building. I haven’t thought of that song in ages, until this week. 

 

I have decided that I sympathize with the foolish builder.  Last week while working on our remodeling gauntlet, I was taking what seemed the zillionth load of rubble to the “burn pile.” I hoisted the wooden handles of the wheel barrow above my head, grunted, and thought “WHO has the patience to build a house?” If you know me, you would know that patience is not one of my strong points, and you might have even discouraged Superhusband and me from taking on such a project. You would have been completely justified in such discouragements. We are not patient people. (For the record, I would not encourage any couple to build/remodel a home until they’ve been married at least five years. Maybe longer. It’s unreasonably hard and both parties develop the tendency to go crazy at the same time. But I digress.)  

 

I believe that patience is what the “foolish” builder lacked.  Both these guys built houses, a hard enough task in itself. But what the wise one did was KEEP digging until he had the right foundation.  He didn’t stop with the obvious. I like Luke’s version best when in verse 48 he records “He is like a man building a house, who dug down deep and laid the foundation on rock.  When a flood came, the torrent struck that house but could not shake it, because it was well built.” Contrast that with the next verse where the other man “built a house on the ground without a foundation.” This is interesting to me because the foolish builder didn’t go out and find the most wishy-washy sand on which to build.  He used the ground.  I have often thought, “It’s the ground.  You can’t get more firm than that.” But it’s not true.  Ask me about placing pillars under a porch deck sometime, and I’ll tell you how NOT reliable the ground can be. Then think about getting beyond that ground to bedrock—not 2 feet, not “til you hit a pipe” but Fred Flintstone bedrock. That takes an awfully long time.  And what happened to the builders was not normal, either.  Who expects a flood right after building their new house?  No one outside of Galveston, Texas, I’d guess. But it flooded.  And the listeners to that parable learned what I need to be reminded of, in my spiritual life as well as my vocational: The preparation is worth it. Whether I’m building my faith or a house, digging deep makes all the difference.

 

And speaking of digging and faith, Superhusband and I are becoming quite a focal point for our neighborhood “scavengers.” It seems the faster we unload the rooms of their baggage, the faster people come out of the woodwork to dig through the garbage.  This has had an effect on how I think about garbage and people.

 

I have had to “dig deep” figuratively in order to try to see these people like God sees them.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a super-sized criticism switch in my brain.  I can walk into a mall and immediately spot the bad haircuts, poor lipstick choices, and not-so-skinny skinny jeans wearers in the place.  And all of those people are ostensibly washed and of a high enough socio-economic class to “shop.” Not so with the people who come to our yard.

 

(I’ll use initials here to protect the privacy of our pickers) There’s T who drives a beat-up minivan and likes to stop by two or three times a day when there’s a good pile out front.  He likes our dog, and likes to let others do the digging while he skims off the top.  There’s J who stopped to get scrap metal and wanted to make sure we weren’t going to rezone our property for government housing. A girl J with her mother stayed for over an hour picking up old fabric to make into purses. And my personal favorite, L, who didn’t have money for a car, or clothes, but walked to the tanning bed and back. These, along with the constant stream of twenty-something ball players and unruly teens that come and go from the apartments next door, make for a busy, distracting, and sometimes annoying atmosphere.  But I’ve started doing two things to help me dig deep in my faith. 

 

1) Every time I’m tempted to criticize a clothing choice (Particularly extra-saggy pants. To quote the great Donna White “I just can’t with that.”) I think, “I don’t know them, but God does.  He loves that kid. God made that kid on purpose to teach the world something about Himself.” Now, I don’t believe that God promotes baggy-pant-wearing, but I know full well that He does not include “baggy pants” in His list of “reasons my child is far from Me.” My job is to discover what God is trying to teach me through that person. Every time.  Every person.

 

2) I have begun introducing myself to each of the scavengers and handing them a card with a map and service times for our home congregation.  I really attempt to remember that this one day, in front of this one pile of garbage, may be the only time I talk to this person my whole life. And if they remember one thing, I want it to be about Love.

 

I am not saying this to brag.  I am confessing that I should have done it sooner.  I am a full 34 and 3/4ths years old, and I have just begun to reach out in my day to day life. And I’m not where I should be, either.  I have not yet found the courage to say things like “Do you know Jesus?”—which is the real reason we “church” anyway. But I’m pushing.  I’m digging.  I’m getting down to the rock of what’s important.  Not clothes, nor scrap, nor economic status, or tan level.  But the people.  Every person God brings to my patch of lawn is a piece of Him that He’s entrusted me to influence this one time.  What an honor.  What a God. What a job.

 

And when I think of what God did for me, it’s obvious what I am in the story.  If we turn this scenario around, I would play the garbage.  God came through and picked ME. Little ol’ me. To do this great thing, and to be married to Superhusband, and to talk to these people, and to live in this house.  He plucked me off the rotting pile and said “There’s usefulness here. I’ll keep this one. In fact, this one is so precious I’ll trade my life for it.” And that’s the miracle.

 

So I encourage you—when you feel the torrential rains coming, and they will come—dig deep. Hit bottom. Level out. You may even have to lay on the rock for a while. After that, you can begin to build a mansion out of salvage.

A Short List of My Demands

 

 

This week Superhusband and I re-joined the 21^st Century.  We got cable AND internet AND new smart phones.  I’m pretty taken with my Motorola Galaxy Stratosphere with the physical keyboard and touch screen.  I’m going to leave it near the package of bacon in the morning and see if, indeed, it can cook my breakfast. But I digress. There are adventures in bureaucracy and the mundane to be told, and I’m just the girl to do it.

 

We signed up for Verizon for our phones on Thursday, April 25^th, 2013 at 1:00 in the afternoon. At such time, we also requested the “Double Play” bundle from Comcast wherein we could get the same price for internet and cable as with going directly through Comcast, just minus the installation fees and plus a gift card. When our intrepid sales rep “Beau” put in our order with Comcast, however, he received an error message saying that the location in question (that being our apartment) was not a residential address.  Oh goody. He assured us that things would be fixed soon and that he would call with details and a solution which he was sure were imminent.

 

Superhusband and I trotted off to Nashville, playing with our phones. When we returned to Florence, we even waited until Monday to call Verizon.  No word. Nothing.  We called again Thursday. Nothing.  We called again the next Monday.  Nine days in, we decided we had had enough and went down to Verizon at 7:45pm, a mere quarter-hour before closing, and were ready to make heads roll—because, frankly, after building fence gates, mucking out a demolished back room, and squaring a porch, I had little patience for someone who got to be clean all day and just push buttons telling me that they couldn’t find the right button to push.  They STILL could tell us no more, and even their “higher-ups” who were working on the case (we were told) couldn’t get closer to resolution.  So Beau printed a screen shot of the error message which contained an 800-number, and sent us on our way with more promises. You would think that as adept as Superhusband and I have gotten with waiting and paperwork that we would be prepared for this.  I have found that one is never prepared for Comcast.

 

The next morning I lived up to my title as Blunderwoman.  Let me just say that if the thought “I’ve got a few minutes before we’re ready to go out; I’ll make a quick call to my cable provider.” EVER runs through your head, squash it. It’s either brainwash time, or you just need to volunteer for euthanasia, because it is a stupid thought. But I had it, and even worse, I dialed the phone.  Upon getting rescued from the worst-quality Musak in the Western hemisphere, I met Ranada. Something in her voice told me that I would not get off the phone unscathed. I had Renada on speaker phone with Superhusband intending to give moral support. 

 

I explained the problem to Renada.  She gave me a sales pitch wherein all the prices were different and installation fees applied, making no reference to our Verizon deal.  Superhusband’s face turned red. I explained the problem again. She gave me a sales pitch wherein all the prices were different and installation fees applied, making no reference to our Verizon deal. Superhusband’s face turned purple and he began to mutter. I explained the problem, doggedly and impassioned. She gave me a sales pitch wherein all the prices were different and installation fees applied, making no reference to our Verizon deal. With Superhusband in grave danger of spontaneously combusting from the neck, I explained to Ranada that she would have to speak to my husband who desperately wanted to explain the problem to her yet again.

After only a few veiled threats and quick conference with her manager, Ranada finally saw things more clearly—that we were going to have the price that was offered, the deal that was offered, and no installation fees.  We made an appointment for installation for Thursday May 9^th, 2013 at 1:00 in the afternoon.  And I’m sure that Superhusband’s face sustained no lasting damage.

 

That, thankfully, was the hard part.  Since getting our new service we have discovered the absolute joy and surge of power that comes with the ON DEMAND button. I have never had this service in a room without wings on it.  It’s reminiscent of Singapore Airlines’ personal entertainment system only lacking the porcelain-faced Asian women bringing me hot towels and snacks (which is a downer, because I really liked them, but the fee to bring one home was just too steep.)  Superhusband and I get practically giddy with authority in choosing shows, mainly of home-renovation-theme, and fast-forwarding through all commercials. And if we don’t like a show, we STOP it.  And if we have to go out, we STOP it.  It is as if the entire home-entertainment industry may not proceed without our express consent.

 

I like the idea so much that I began thinking about other things that I would like to be able to “ON DEMAND.”  Food, that’s one.  Imagine the possibilities if I could speak the word “CAKE” and one appear before me?  And if it’s not a flavor I liked? I could send it back to the ether along with all the calories I consumed.  All that would be lost is the time I took to taste it.  Now that’s power. Or if I could say “FAMILY” and they would appear, and press pause and they’d stay healthy. If I could say “CHILDREN” and immediately have a brood of my own—or better yet “GRANDCHILDREN” and I could just skip to the spoiling them part of the story and not have to actually put in the hard years of disciplining impressionable beings. I could say “HOUSE” and either get our home completely renovated or have Hugh Laurie appear before me brashly.  I’d be okay with whichever.

 

Then, this morning, Superhusband and I were listening to one of our favorite on-air local preachers while we were getting ready for our home-congregation’s worship service.  His message was about filling our spiritual gas tank, and about how God doesn’t give us an “empty light” because He never intended us to get low on fuel. We were made to be full and made to be driven. Then I thought, reverently, what if Spiritual help was “ON DEMAND?”  Then a second later I thought, “Oh…it is. I just don’t push the button.”

 

I am determined to make more use of the incredible, supernatural, magnificent, magnanimous, graceful help of my Lord than I have before. Things in my recent life have been raw and scary and twisted and really sometimes quite pathetic. I have felt so burdened and blinded, self-righteous and selfish—and honestly so convinced of my own opinion on a subject that I would physically choke any nay-sayers with my tiny bare hands (at least to where they pass out. Don’t act like you’ve never felt that way.) But all I really have to do is submit to prayer. Live the discipline, and my ON DEMAND help will be delivered straight to my consciousness.  It might not change my circumstances, but it WILL change my perception. He can do that.  I need to act like I believe that the Loving Being who spoke all things into reality can, will, and will always listen to me.  Especially when I’m not making sense to anyone else.  Especially when I’m so knotted up in what I think and my “rights” that I can’t see straight. Even when I want what is wrong, He can deliver right thinking. If you see me not acting on this belief, call me on it. Demand it even.

 

Now, I’ve got more “Rehab Addict” to attend to. As always, thanks for reading.

Two scoops of blue shag, and other "shouldn't haves"

 

It is now May. While my mind feels as though the dust is still swirling, my body and the calendar tell me that a lot has settled in the last five months (mainly that my Superhusband is a green-card-carrying permanent resident of the U S of A!). Spring has sprung in North Alabama, and as my BEST cousin “Kitty” said, “Now that you’ve got an apartment, a garden, and a new stove, it’s time for another blog.” We have tallied many adventures betwixt then and now, so don’t hold your breath while you read. It’s going to be a doozie.

 

Between November 7 and December 9, 2012, Superhusband and I drove the entire width of Australia. Twice. That’s a little over 2,000 miles in a four-door Ford Falcon pulling our beloved 14-foot caravan.  We conquered deserts, forests, inland metropolises like Salmon Gums and Eucla, and even drove the Nullarbor Plain where the horizon was set by spirit level. We paid, in American terms, roughly $15 a gallon for gas. We witnessed a dust storm first hand, changed a flat tire on the crispy South Australian asphalt, and met countless Irish twenty-somethings earning five times their normal wage to spend their gap years bartending in forsaken outposts. Superhusband I together visited our first American Consulate in Sydney, and had the interview of our lives in a room reminiscent of a DMV. (If there are any Australian readers here, that interview was given to us by a woman who freakishly resembled the large, island woman in the insurance commercials who proclaims “Rhonda is mine!” Americans, you can google it.) We even celebrated our first anniversary and our second Thanksgiving on the road. That Thanksgiving dinner was complete with a turkey roast, dressing, asparagus and cheese sauce, cranberry sauce, and roasted sweet potatoes—ALL made in the caravan parked in the Lane Cove River nature preserve north of Sydney. I even got to SEE a live turkey that morning.  Unfortunately he was pecking through our garbage. What a trip.

 

 The summer had started to swelter in WA, and I tried to stamp all of the colors into my memory before our long journeys outward.  There is a reason that few impressionist painters are bred in Australia—those hazy, smooshy, feathered colors are part of reality in France, or Virginia, or even around the smoky swamps of Louisiana. They are far from the vision of Australia, especially its West.  Somewhere between Toodyay and Cocklebiddy, God cleaned off his palate knife, scraping huge clumps of color into the landscape.  The gum trees have a dark green-black oiliness that shimmers like taffy above the brick red rocks.  The sky is Looney-Tunes blue with creamy, muscular white clouds that make you think there’s a tiny train puffing away on a track just out of view.  The Indian Ocean is unadulterated turquoise; the sand stark eggshell. It’s a place of dust and sun and waves and bizarre creatures and musical, guttural language. There is no subtly in Australia. The land and the people are equally bold. It has made a dent in my psyche, and I will be forever changed and grateful.

 

We left Australia for England on Christmas Eve 2012. Then there’s English Christmas. After a roughly 20-hour flight and a surreal stop-over in Singapore where forty-foot Christmas trees bubbled with orchids of every description in every corner of the airport, we touched down in Manchester at 8am on Christmas day.  Uncle Alec was our welcoming committee in the frigid drizzle, and in just over an hour we were enveloped in the arms and 80-degrees-warm house of Auntie Maureen.  We had coffee and home-made mince pies (there should be a whole post devoted to these later.  Maybe I’ll write one post for the sugar-coated, perfectly crumbly pastry, and a WHOLE ‘nother post for the spicy fruit filling.  You just can’t understand.) We got freshened up a bit and then walked to “pop ‘round” to Superhusband’s cousin’s house.  We “rugged up” in our scarves and hats and boots and clomped intrepidly through a back lane from one side of Moss Side, Leyland to the other.  The cold, damp air was almost unbreathable, and the sound of my boots on the broken asphalt was so sharp and loud (after some jetlag, to be fair) it was unnerving.  It was as though Singapore Airlines had developed a wormhole and spit us out on another planet—the realities of Australia and England could not have been further apart without including extra terrestrials. The next few days were a flurry of new family faces, bone-chilling winds, ivy-covered cottages gripping the damp, green hills, and more roasted food than I have ever encountered in one place in my life.  I developed a love for my new family and for parsnips, in that order.

 

Unfortunately, while I was meeting and/or reconnecting with my new family, my old family was straining under the weight of new burdens. My newest nephew was delivered a month early because of my sister-in-law’s ill health; my grandfather was put in the hospital that same time. As my parents tried to cope with round-the-clock care for them, my father’s health was in decline.  We got the call on December 29^th that Dad was in the hospital for emergency amputation of his left leg. His father, my Pappaw, died on January 5. Dad didn’t even get to go to the funeral. And I was left to play out all of this range of emotions in front of caring, yet fairly unfamiliar, people a half-world away from home.  All of England’s beauty couldn’t buy me comfort.

 

But it was useless being depressed.  Superhusband and I plucked up our spirits and saw some of the most breath-taking things on the planet. I stood in the room where Shakespeare was born. I ate icecream made on-site at a dairy farm near Blackpool. I met my husband’s best friend that he’s known since the age of 4. I got to stand on a mountain in Wales. (Every inch of that tiny highland nation is fascinating, and our family in Ruthin gives the best guided tours. If you need some vacation ideas, let me know—I will hook you up!) And then our three weeks of the old country were done, and it was time to move on.  We flew back to Australia for three weeks and final goodbyes, and after a serendipitously missed flight and a grand overnight stay in Sydney, we were off to America to start over.

 

I have found that you never really understand a place until you’ve seen it through someone else’s eyes.  This has been my experience with Superhusband’s adjustment to my childhood home of Florence, AL. Just like I was in Australia, now he is here: struggling with feeling grown-up and self-sufficient in a place with all different rules, different notions of correctness, different practices of the postal service, etc. I never knew how many burger joints there were in Florence until we started looking for something other than burgers to eat.  Before I travelled to Australia I had a sneaking suspicion that cream cheese wontons weren’t authentically Chinese, but now I know for certain, and it has cast a different light on my beloved Peking Buffet. And if it weren’t for a new Publix opening up on Cox Creek Parkway, we would have had to send to Perth to get our HP Sauce! So many differences. So many challenges. I’m waiting for the “so much reward” part. 

 

On top of this, we have been working our fingers to the bone and have not earned one, red cent. As you may have guessed, we are not a couple who settles for predictability, our new life here has started with some overwhelmingly huge tasks. Well, task. We are currently renovating a house my father sold to us for $10. And by renovating, I mean excavating.  Let me explain.

 

The house has been un-lived-in for about ten years, and unlivable for five. It’s a 1940’s dormer bungalow with three bedrooms and ¾ acre of land. Two of the bedrooms, all of the common rooms, and half of the land were filled with my father’s “collections.” We are not talking art, were talking junk. Out of date car seats, soda bottles, pesticide pumps, boxes of screws, a 1970 year book from a school that none of our family attended, paint rollers still in their packaging, plastic beads, play-doh, aluminum cans, boxes of fabric, pictures of people we don’t know, funeral flowers, 1960’s elementary science books, my homework papers from 1988, ruined shoes, dirty blankets, roughly 200 cans of paint in rusty buckets, old shingles, two derelict water heaters, three rolls of waterlogged fiberglass insulation, dolls, keepsakes, angle iron, five non-functioning chainsaws, good china, McDonald’s happy meal toys….and in the back room which had been partially knocked off the house by a tree, a blue shag carpet so old and rotten that it had to be removed with shovels…….all coexist and molder on the property. Some days I feel like I must know how those mucking out after hurricane Katrina must felt—only the hurricane is someone I love. It started out as a desire to help others; to fix and mend and restore and bless, just like a hurricane starts as a small trough of low pressure which brings much-needed rain to a parched region. It breaks my heart to hear all of the “shouldn’t haves” that are echoed from the piles.

 

So that’s where we are. Each day we laugh a little, cry a little, work a little, and dream big. We fellowship with our new church family, bake exotic cakes, and have the privilege of seeing our oldest nephew performing a fantastic rendition of an elephant in the kindergarten program. We are learning the joys of being still. I’ll save more detail for next time—I’ve got to call Superhusband who is currently concreting in a post for our fence. Until then, love from Blunderwoman.