More House Thoughts

God's been showing me lately how this epic house building project is like having children.

When the house is just an idea, it's an exciting time - like pregnancy. You spend time dreaming about the life growing inside of you. You pour over every baby magazine and book you can find. You make a million plans about how you will and won't raise the child. You run into bumps like "morning" sickness and multiple, middle of the night trips to the bathroom. You hit the nesting phase and make some real preparation progress. You get everything ready. You even think you're ready.

Then...you have the baby. You break ground and realize that the real work begins now. You discover that every plan, every preparation you've made does not even touch the task before you. You're plagued by sleepless nights, loads of hormones, and the internal question of whether or not you've made the right decision. Whatever the answer is, you realize it's too late to back out now and you dig your heels in and brace yourself for the years ahead.

Each little stage is an accomplishment. You rejoice over the first night of five hours of sleep in a row. You're relieved when they sit on their own and switch from the breast to a cup. You cheer for the first word, the first step, the first anything. Then you hit the big one - the first birthday. You look at the frame and realize how fast it went up.

Then one night you go to bed and it dawns on you that this whole year doesn't even scratch the surface of the work in front of you. Sure you've got it framed, but now comes all that time when you work on the interior. You train and you train and you train. You pour your heart and soul into this person. You make decisions that you know will affect the child for the next several years, if not forever. And it’s rare that anyone, including you, can see any real progress. It is slow going.

There are other big stages that will offer some outward signs of progress like sheet rock/graduation and finishing touches/vocational decisions. And before you know it, you're sitting in your new home with your feet up drinking a glass of wine in front of the fire.

But here's the thing, you're not really done yet. There are changes to be made, details to be added. In short, it's always going to be a work in progress. The longer you live in it, the more ways you will find to make it your own. The more thought and work you put into it, the more you appreciate it.

We don’t quit being parents either – the job description just changes. Their needs will be different, and so will our worries. God is the same with us. He never gives up on us. He never stops allowing us to change and grow. And, in the end, if we allow Him, the product is something more beautiful than we ever imagined.