Roller Coaster

A lot of things were done at the house this past week.  I spent most of my time there, and as expected, I'm pretty worn out.  The week got off to a very quick start.  Tim and I sat down Monday morning because I was having a bit of a break down because I was trying to wrap my mind around all the things that needed to happen.  And because I was tired of this house being the center of our lives.  This has been quite an overwhelming task for two people who don't really know anything about home improvement.

But, the Lord was very faithful and restored my joy for that day.  Tim went crazy calling people and by Tuesday we had an electrician, air duct cleaning, carpet removed, nail holes filled in the floors, and quite a few small projects done.  I felt like a tornado with all the things going on!  Our electrician even came in $300 under what we had budgeted.  It was pretty amazing to see all these things coming together so quickly... such a testament to the faithfulness of our God.

New breaker box and quad outlet

Breaker box explosion!

Dad filling holes in the floor

Carpet curb-side

Air duct vacuum hose

Usually I'm behind the camera, but I figured
this warranted a picture.  

So, the beginning of the week was going just swimmingly, but then I started getting into the big, not fun projects.  Plus, I was starting to run out of energy.  I primed all the door frames which is a very smelly job because of the oil based paint.  My entire house smells awful now.  I also was still painting and touching up other areas.  Ken came over and was patching the cracks in our ceilings.  My mom and brother came in Thursday night to help us pack the apartment.  We also did our normal Thursday night college Bible study, which was great.  We watched a video and talked about the greatness of God.  How the whole universe communicates to us the majesty, and splendor, and bigness of God.  I'm so thankful that I'm not the biggest and most important thing in the world.  This lesson was a great reminder to keep the right perspective.  I know that things in the house will get done in time and that there are many more important things happening in my life.  Like marriage, and family, and college ministry, and friends... like people!

But then Friday happened.  My brother and I went to the house and were met by one of my sweet college girls to pull up the linoleum in the kitchen and dining room.  This did not go well.  We pulled it up easily enough, but the paper stayed down on top of the adhesive, which I knew would probably happen because I had read about it on the internet.  What I did not bargain for was the other 2 layers of linoleum under that on top of rotting particle board under it all.  At this point, I just moved on to another project.  Jonathan and I tried to get rid of the old shelves in our garage with no success at all.

So now I have a stinky house, unfinished floor in the entire house, an unorganized garage, a dirty refrigerator that will have to live in the garage for a while, a dining table that will be in the garage while we use a card table, unfinished cabinets that aren't ready for dishes or pots, one functional but dirty bathroom, and not a very good attitude.  How fickle I can be!  I don't want these temporary, silly things to be my focus or steal my joy.  There is a song that talks about standing with my "heart abandoned in awe of the One who gave it all."  I feel like I'm letting my kitchen floor have pieces of my heart instead of fully giving my love to the Lord.  That floor doesn't and never will love me back!  But my Savior loves me more perfectly than I can ever imagine and deserves my whole heart.

Ok, I'm done preaching (mostly to myself!) and here are a few more pictures of life as I know it at the moment.

Linoleum gone, paper still there

Second layer of linoleum

Current state of our apartment- thanks mom!!!!

And in other news, my brother found Jesus!  One of my coworkers had told me about the (creepily) giant statue of Jesus at her church, and Tim and I had looked for it more than once, but it turns out we were looking at the wrong church.  Jonathan and I were driving from the house to the apartment and he said, "Is that Jesus?"  It was a pretty funny statement, but I instantly knew what he was talking about and yelled, "Did you find him?!"