Weeds

As most of you know, I glean most of my spiritual lessons and applications from my day to day life. If I had one word to describe the past several weeks of it, it would be: WEEDS. 

Owning a home has its perks; owning an older home has its charms; but there are times that they combine and the result is not quite HGTV. (At least they get to fast forward). 

Justin and I have finished the bathtub remodel, assembled a shed, painted and redecorated a laundry room, loaded and unloaded mass amounts of filter sand and appliances, installed a fountain, mulched flowerbeds, and numerous other things I don't even want to rehash right now. 

I'm not one of those "Let's work together, this is fun" types. I am the girl who watches makeover shows and speeds through until the end result is finished. I don't want to see all that in-between stuff. Bor-ing. Give me the before picture. Give me the after picture. And I'm golden. 

That's kind of how I am in real life too. While "I want a divorce," is probably the worst thing your husband could say to you, I dare to say, "Can you come out here and help me with something?" could be a close second. 

You know a man's desperate when he wants me (the girl who asks if the flat head screwdriver is the flat one) to be his right-hand man. My job was seemingly simple. Use my sweet little voice to guide him from my view on the inside of the shed. Disaster. I froze. I couldn't remember my left from my right; I would zone out and forget to tell him "when." 

"Ashton. Use words. Use your words. Words are helpful!"

At one point, I cried out angrily, "Just call a BOYYYY!"

Crash, bang, crash. Something fell over, but it literally sounded like the roof was caving in on me. 

Oh, I said a word. Not a really pretty one. It scares me that if I leave this Earth any other way but peaceful, my last words may not be inspirational (gotta work on that). 

So this is just a snapshot of the last several weeks. I'm happy to report we still love each other. And that I have regained the ability to tell my left from my right. 

As I was pulling yet more weeds today, I got to thinking: 

I'm an old house. My appliances like to call it quits; I need patching after a rough storm. I require daunting maintenance and attention; weeds keep popping up even after they're destroyed;

Yet God bought me. He could have had a new house in the suburbs with brand new appliances. 

But he thought I was charming. He thought I had potential. And he decided to work on me every day of my life, pulling weeds he thought he got rid of; ripping down the vines and ivy that attempt to suck the joy out of my life (that is both literal and figurative. I hate you ivy). 

I sat in my now beautiful backyard tonight and I felt a very small-scale version of God at the end of creation. The demolition of shrub roots and the trimming of flowers is a far cry from say humans, animals, stars, and oh yeah- light, but it still was so, so good. I almost said, "And it was good," but I didn't want to steal his line. 

How cool is it that God sees us that way? That he takes time to sit back and view our progress as true beauty? He knows he can't hang up the shovels and the saws and the annoying wife helpers-- but the more he works on us, the more he loves the old house that will become his dwelling place.