disarray

I want you to know before you read this particular post that I am in no way complaining.

It is amazing to me that so many times progress looks like disarray.  Tonight we have a lot of disarray.  A lot of it.

First of all, our dining room is finally ready to be primed and painted!  I am so excited.  Such a lot of progress, but right now it looks like this:

And it was A LOT of work, Andy worked so hard it aged him 20 years!  Look:

See what I mean?!  ;)

So, that's THAT room looking ready for a face lift.

A couple of days ago I was frustrated with not being able to progress on the dining room.  My response to this was to tear apart another room.  It's a perfectly reasonable response (in spite of what my husband may thing).  :)

I attacked my craft room, and I mean ATTACKED it.  

I know what you're thinking, that I cleaned it.  Because obviously it needs it.  

Nope.

What I did was move all of the stuff in the room from side to side as I tore out paneling and tore down ceiling tiles.

But now I know for sure what is hiding behind the facade of this room:

Underneath the paneling is the outside of the house...or what was once the outside.  This was once the porch of the house and they enclosed it.  I'm still contemplating what to do with the walls.

But I know exactly what I want to do with the beadboard ceiling.  Keep it!  Of course I'll have to pull out all of those pesky staples and scrape a lot of paint...but I think it will be worth it in the end.

So, as I said, disarray, but progress.  Lots of progress.

Actually, as I write that, I'm thinking that is often the way that it goes.  We make progress in our lives - towards our goals, physically, spiritually - and it looks and feels merely like disarray.  But it's a beautiful mess, as is so beautifully described in The Shack by William Paul Young.

This is one of the books I would have on my figurative nightstand.  I once read an interview in a magazine and that is one of the questions the interviewer asked, "What books do you have on your nightstand?"  Now, I didn't have a nightstand at the time, and I like the question better as a figurative question.  What books do you turn to over and over again - in your head, or literally pick up and read again and again.  The Shack is one of mine.

You?

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