in 74 days

I’m sitting here with my giant swollen ankle and knee propped up on a pair of pants, on a napkin holder, on a stool, typing, at 11:48 p.m. while my husband sleeps soundly in the bed after we argued about the need for emotional connection and our lack of it… literally within 15 minutes of our friends leaving our doorstep. Life is not perfect guys. We are not perfect.

 We’ve lived here since March 29^th. We are barreling into our third month… Libby sounded so impressed when she was here. I suppose looking at the decoration and thinking we’d only been here a few months was the reason because it’s not that we have done anything super impressive. But yes, I am my mother’s daughter and was raised in the South. We are ‘’decorated’’ up in this place. That is just what you DO.

I can barely believe it. This is the same place, that 74 days ago was a shell, missing doors and a toilet and lighting….with massive boxes and unassembled furniture literally packed like a Tetris puzzle from floor to ceiling. Oh the stress. The daily, arduous toil of getting up and trying to find some semblance of what to do next, while also working (him full time, me part time), and raising a kid. It was just…overwhelming. I didn’t know where to start. Everyone kept telling me I’d get it done, eventually, I would. Thank you. Thank you for telling me that. I really had no idea how it ever could happen, and I wouldn’t have believed it would get done, so thank you for continually telling me that. I can hear my mother-in-law, my mom, my dad, my sister, Uncle Jimmy, all telling me, it’ll get done. Give yourself time. Time! That was my enemy. I didn’t know what to do with it. It intimidated me. I was exhausted, and I had no energy, and it sat there saying “here I am… use me! Don’t waste me!” And all I wanted to do was waste it because of how tired I was and how worn out I was emotionally, physically, mentally, AND MOST IMPORTANTLY Spiritually. Time. Ugh. How to spend it? The HARDEST decision. The mixture of shame and guilt over what I didn’t do … what I needed to do… what is obligation? What is priority? What is desire? And Dad says “if you really want to do something, you’ll do it…” What does that mean?? It all jumbled itself up in my head until I felt drunk on my thoughts, in a stupor in my head. That is what I was.

It was hard. It was tough. And IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII did not perform gracefully. If there was a videotape or snap chat of my day-to-day activities it would be rated TVMA. I was not on good behavior, and Jesse took most of my crap unloading. I took his too. Literally, it felt like that’s all we did for a while…. Just sling crap back and forth at each other. Until finally, at some point, we weren’t even concerned with whatever the thing was we were slinging, we just both sat down and said “I’m tired of slingin! I’m exhausted. I’m dying here. I’m burning both ends of the candle… I can’t keep going anymore.” And so we start trying to make change, pause some things- stop trying to get everything done… just work with what we have… and come to find, oh, actually, while I was slinging so much crap around, I did actually get a lot of stuff done at least. Haha I’m not sure how. But wow- thanks God. THAT’S GRACE. That is the amazing grace!! That WHILE my husband and I had arguments and fights, our furniture got put together and our food got purchased and cooked, and doors got up, and the lights, and the door knobs, and then closets, and shelves, and bookcases, OUR BED finally, and and the toilets, and wahlaw- apartment shell became our nest. While we were busy feeding our sinful desires and exhaustive tendencies, Jesus did the real work, behind the scenes, and some of the physical work too. Our handyman Gabriel- literally the nicest guy ever… as well as our closet guy. Incredible.… Could this be Romans 8 at all?

And so here I am, 12:04 a.m., and I’m thinking through all this. We’ve just had unexpected guests over to our home tonight for dinner, Eli’s friends, as he calls them. “Mommy, all my friends is here!” And it was lovely. We communed together, and talked, and rested, and looked in shock and awe at my ridiculously swollen leg, and talked about how apparently there are multiple ways to pronounce or tonalize portions of a name that then completely create a new name… bizarre. It all sounds the same to these Southern bread ears even though I did get an BA in Music.

But this place, this nest that was once a shell, that was once not even ours, was a place tonight, where the Spirit of God was. He settled among us. I could sense him as crisply as the coffee Jesse made me and brought to me since I couldn’t walk. I felt. It. I don’t always feel it. Most of the time I don’t feel it, but tonight I did. And I see that God has really worked a miracle…. But no, it’s not that he’s worked a miracle, because THIS is not it…. God’s work is bigger than an apartment in the Lower East Side that can be used for a ministry hub in conjunction with replanting a church nearby…. NO! God’s plan is much more grand. God’s plan reaches back to the girl with maroon color hair loading a plane to California to train to teach English to middle schoolers in Hong Kong. And it stretches back to all the places that each one of the people here in our apartment were 15, 20 years ago… AND it stretches forward to much more than any thing any of us will do in our years here on earth, here in the LES, Chinatown, or on Chrystie Street. It stretches back to before the previous owners of this apartment and forward beyond toward who will inhabit this home after Jesse, myself, Eli, and our pets, and “Eli’s friends” are all gone. We are but a dot, a speck, dust. And God is planting His church… His Kingdom…. His world… waiting for the day that He takes His bride to the New Heavens and the New Earth.

It wasn’t easy to get through these 74 days. I wasn’t easy to get from being the 20-year-old girl with maroon/red hair to the 35 ½ year old mom with purple hair. It was a fight the whole way. Didn’t God tell us we’d have to fight the earth? Wasn’t that part of the curse of the Fall? But take heart, TAKE HEART, He has overcome the world… and He has overcome this 2-bedroom apartment in the LowerEastSide. And when I stop to breath and realize that, I realize that I did it. I did get it done, all the stuff, the things that my mother-in-law, and my mom, and my dad, and Uncle Jimmy and so many others told me…. We got it together. One tiny pebble at a time. It felt monstrophic, and like I said, I pitched one heck of a fit through the process, BUT… we are here… now… and we can figure it out together…. I made it through. I survived… by God’s grace, with God’s strength. Grace and strength from God don’t mean “everything feels easy.” Grace and strength from God means, “I endure…”

And here on out, we’ll still have to have grace… grace upon grace… and patience with each other. We’ll have to allow room for each of us to be exactly who we are, completely less than ideal humans only saved by grace and prone to slip into the angry tirade. And that slip doesn’t mean we are failures. It means we are a work, a piece, in the potter’s hand, being molded and made malleable. 74 days of being beaten down has left me feeling a bit more malleable. A bit more strengthened to take a step of faith and let go of some of my control… God took everything out of my control, and my biggest fears came true, I lost it. I totally lost my mind at times. I thought I was ready for the looney bin, but then I’d wake up the next day, and I’d just start over, and try again. And somewhere in there I realized that that is what the Father’s grace is about. He knows how we are going to paint our pictures. When I give Eli crayons and markers and he says he is going to draw a boat and a car and a mountain with a rocket ship, I know to expect endless circles of scribble. But he is so particular with his pictures. In the end, they are good for nothing in terms of reflecting a mountain or rocket ship or boat and car. But what do I do? I hang those suckers on my wall because MY ELI drew them. Even though they are sticky from his grapes and raisins and have a milk splotch on them. I hang ‘em up. And that is exactly what God does with us. We muddle through this life, making one heck of a mess of it, and in the end, we are tempted to crouch in the corner and cry because we think it’s so awful, and we think of how badly we’ve ruined it all. But what does God do? He picks us up, and He holds us up, and He says “This… this is my little masterpiece in the making. She’s learning that she can’t control everything right now.” And the angels rejoice. And then he sits me back down and lets me get back to work, while he watches over me with immense care and works in all thing for the good and for His Kingdom and the redemption of the elect in the Lord and His eternal purposes! Praise God. Praise God from whom all blessings flow… Praise God who has called me to Him, I am so undeserving. Only He has opened my eyes. Nothing in me has opened my eyes. No good deed. It was all him. I will forever be grateful. He can ask of me absolutely anything because there is no good part of my life today that is not exactly crafted by His hand. Every joy, every blessing, every lining of silver, …. All Him, 100%. No fake purses here. Only the real thing.

May God be Glorified and Magnified. Amen.

12:28 p.m.