House and Home
We are in the final stages of selling our house and buying another one.
To provide a little perspective, my wife and I moved into this house over nine years ago, back before we had any children. (Ah, the quiet life…) Growing up, my family moved every four or five years, so this is officially the house that has been my home for the longest period of time. It’s been a good place to live.
So now we’re getting ready to move. The funny thing is that I am fixing things now that we’ve lived with for most of the time we’ve been here. The timer knobs on the oven broke off during our first year here, and just the other day I found replacements for them. No, I hadn’t been looking for them for eight years – we just grabbed the metal rod and set the timer that way. It was livable.
All summer, our “way-back yard” has been overgrown, and I even gave up on the garden mid-way through. Now, everything is clean and beautiful. Even our little fire pit is newly refurbished with kindling ready to strike an evening campfire during the cool fall evenings. We’re not likely to get to use it, but I finally got around to it. (Well, actually I was procrastinating the daunting task of packing up the disarray in my shed, so I have a good excuse…)
I also fixed the basement doorbell, a minor leak in the roof, a stuck shower valve, a broken spring in our dishwasher, and a number of other things that were on my “honey-do” list. All minor projects; all pending for some significant amount of time.
This got me to thinking. Why is it that I was willing to live with things not-quite-right for so long when it was so easy to fix them? Why was it more important for me to fix them for this other family that will soon be making this their home instead of ours?
How am I settling for the not-quite-right in other areas of my life? Is it something that is easy to “fix”? Just a thought…
Oh, and let me tell you. Our “new” house won’t have any pending projects once we get all moved in and settled. I won’t let them accumulate on me like they did at this “old” house… (please note intended sarcasm here)
We let the little things accumulate because we are actually living our lives and enjoying our children, I think. Our house is a home to us and the little things don’t bother us because we are in the big picture. Other people just see the the domicile and haven’t had the chance to make it imperfectly their own yet. Or at least, that’s the way I see it.
Plus HGTV is evil and has made people expect a level of unmaintainable perfection.
i agree. you have to use the 20 year rule. Are you really going to look back in 20 yrs and care that your doorbell was broken or that you spent that time it could have been fixed doing fun stuff with your family?
besides life is about the journey. if you got everything that needs to be done, what would you do?
In the sermon at my church today, my takeaway was that God made us discontent. That way we can spend our lives on becoming a better follower.
Diana – I think you can leave off the “HG” part of your last statement. We got rid of all forms of external inputs to our vacuum tube monitor a long time ago; now all it does is display DVDs and the output from our Wii.
Andy – Your pastor made a good point. I think we should be continually seeking closer relationship with God in response to all discontent in our lives. That way, we can be content in Him and then we’ll have the emotional and physical reserves to do the rest of what we’re required to do.