Monday, August 20, 2007

Not a-peeling at all

This past week won't go down as one of my greatest holidays - memorable yes, but not exactly brimming with excitement. I took the week off work to remove paint and wallpaper from my bathroom. I will admit though that it's amazing what spiritual applications you can learn on a stepladder in the bathtub while your head is stuck up in the recesses of the ceiling.

The mildew in the shower has been so hard to keep a handle on and everytime I cleaned, more paint would peel from the walls and ceiling above a marble tub surround. The tool rental place said a heat gun, paint stripper thingy could not be used on the plaster as the paint would melt into it. So last week from Monday to Thursday I scraped, and scraped, and scraped, and scraped...sometimes making only a few inches progress per hour it seemed. My arms ached from holding them above my head for so long and my back and legs groaned from standing on the ladder (poor me!). Often (about every 30 minutes) I just wanted to forget it, clean it as best I could and paint over top of the mess. But I know that preparation is far more important than slapping the paint on....otherwise, without a good base beneath the paint, I will be right back here again in a year or two.


Preparation. Without the endless hours of preparation, everything on the surface may look good for a bit...but eventually, the dirt and the ugliness seeps through and it is seen for what it really is. As I chipped away at the paint, I ridiculously wanted to ask God to please just make the paint all come off easily for me. After all, this was my 'holiday' and it was taking all week just to get this far! Instead though, I found myself asking God if He ever found me this terribly difficult to get through to.... to 'scrape' and get to the 'real' me (kinda like the 'layers of the onion' to use Shrek terms...). I wasn't sure I wanted to hear His answer. As He tries to shape my character to be more like Him and attempts to peel away the worst parts of me, I wonder if I stubbornly cling to the familiar, not allowing Him to prepare me for results that He already knows are beautiful. Stupid thing is...if I try to conceal the crappier parts of me, I fool only myself. God can clearly see me. And others will eventually see me for who I am, when God chips away the exterior shell. So why fight it?

Ever noticed that the cool guys in the Bible....the ones we view as heroes....all went through preparation times in their lives before the excitement began? Joseph, Mr. Technicolour Coat guy, was the dreamer. Ended up in a pit...and in jail for what must have seemed forever. But it was preparation for being the leader of the country....and he passed preparation classes with flying (techni)colours. Same with David...shepherd boy on hills....considered nobody by everybody but God. God saw a giant slayer and a king in the little guy. So he prepared him through events over time out there on the hills.

Preparation seems like a lifetime...and in some cases....I guess it really is. At one point last week I had been scraping off wallpaper behind the toilet and I had just had enough...I was literally ready to cry. I was carefully working to preserve the wallpaper border that I've had for a few years because I really like it, so I was planning to 'frame' it with chair rail and wainscotting. My son walked in the bathroom to ask me something, and thinking he was helping me, he took a corner of my beloved border and in a fraction of a second ripped a big strip of it off the wall! He obviously saw a look of extreme horror on my face as I shrieked 'DON'T!!!!' He vanished quickly, especially when the nature of his question to me involved my credit card. Isn't life like that? We get to a point of just having had enough...wanting to throw in the towel....and someone comes and rips a strip off us - the only good thing we had left. Even so, it is our reaction to this stuff that is more important than the circumstances of our life. Two people experiencing the same painful event in their lives can have two completely different outlooks....one may be gracious, peaceful, and radiate humility....the other may be miserable, self absorbed, and seek pity from others. Who would you rather be around? Who is more like Jesus?


I wish I could show you a picture of my finished bathroom. But it's not done yet. Thankfully the messiest part is over and it is useable, but I have a ways to go yet. That phrase comes to mind...."Please be patient with me. God's not finished with me yet." Life would be too boring if God was finished with us. As long as we're living in an imperfect world around people, there will be many more moments of scraping, sanding, smoothing, and cleaning. Preparation is unavoidable. Our reaction to it is our choice. God says He sees something beautiful in me. I choose to believe Him and choose to let Him change me where He sees problems....and maybe I'll avoid a few unnecessary messes in my life!