A touch of philosophy to put an insane summer in perspective
Again, I apologize for not being on much at all. This journal is almost 12 years old (!) and it's amazing how, over that space of time, not only has life changed dramatically, but also the demands on my time. On one hand, I suppose it's much better to have more of an "off-line" life; on the other, there are aspects of having time to think and write that I do sorely miss. However, for those still out there, and those still interested, here is a little bit about what's been going on recently.
So, despite living on a hill in a part of the country that is fairly dry, our house flooded. We didn't get deluged by rain or a river, but rather by the refrigerator, which was dripping, dripping from a broken (or defective) part. This dripping probably started even before we moved in, but we didn't notice it until the beginning of this summer, when we noticed that when we stepped on the floor in the kitchen, little drops of water came up between the floorboards.
To make a very long story shorter, it turns out that this little drip had not only ruined the hardwood in our kitchen and dining room, but had gotten into the subfloor, crawlspace, and foundation and saturated the support beams and insulation. (Insert parable about little sins creating big problems here.) In any case, we ended up unable to live in the house some of the time, and both our landlord and the contractor have given us a lot of problems, even though we have tried to be as cooperative as possible. (I will mention here that it is the landlord's refrigerator, not ours, that did the damage.)
In any case, there are people currently working on the floor in the downstairs, as, for over the last month and a half, we have been living with just the subfloor in the kitchen, dining room, and laundry room, (with assorted tarps to make the place somewhat livable.)
Yesterday, after the guys left for the day, I peeked down from the upstairs over to the entryway from the deck in the back of the living room. Mind you, this was also an area with hardwood floors, and so it had also been stripped to the subfloor. I was shocked to see regular flooring there again, so much so that what I was seeing almost didn't compute. Although the area isn't finished yet, it really reminded me of what that area should be like.
The thought that also accompanied this was that, for whatever reason, it becomes easy to get used to how things are - even when that's not how things are supposed to be. I'm sure that part of this is a coping mechanism. However, after nearly two months where our downstairs has been torn up, dust all over the place, and the finished floor has been missing (causing the carpeting in the rest of the house look awful, no matter how many times we've cleaned & vaccuumed it, because there's still more dust and scraps that get tracked on it) I've gotten used to this being the "normal" state of affairs.
From this, I have to surmise that one of the challenges of life, especially for the Christian, is to be able to acknowledge the world as it is, but still remember it as it ought to be, and not get discouraged - nor forget what the Ideal is - in working toward that goal.
Hebrews 11:10 (NIV) - "For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God."
So, despite living on a hill in a part of the country that is fairly dry, our house flooded. We didn't get deluged by rain or a river, but rather by the refrigerator, which was dripping, dripping from a broken (or defective) part. This dripping probably started even before we moved in, but we didn't notice it until the beginning of this summer, when we noticed that when we stepped on the floor in the kitchen, little drops of water came up between the floorboards.
To make a very long story shorter, it turns out that this little drip had not only ruined the hardwood in our kitchen and dining room, but had gotten into the subfloor, crawlspace, and foundation and saturated the support beams and insulation. (Insert parable about little sins creating big problems here.) In any case, we ended up unable to live in the house some of the time, and both our landlord and the contractor have given us a lot of problems, even though we have tried to be as cooperative as possible. (I will mention here that it is the landlord's refrigerator, not ours, that did the damage.)
In any case, there are people currently working on the floor in the downstairs, as, for over the last month and a half, we have been living with just the subfloor in the kitchen, dining room, and laundry room, (with assorted tarps to make the place somewhat livable.)
Yesterday, after the guys left for the day, I peeked down from the upstairs over to the entryway from the deck in the back of the living room. Mind you, this was also an area with hardwood floors, and so it had also been stripped to the subfloor. I was shocked to see regular flooring there again, so much so that what I was seeing almost didn't compute. Although the area isn't finished yet, it really reminded me of what that area should be like.
The thought that also accompanied this was that, for whatever reason, it becomes easy to get used to how things are - even when that's not how things are supposed to be. I'm sure that part of this is a coping mechanism. However, after nearly two months where our downstairs has been torn up, dust all over the place, and the finished floor has been missing (causing the carpeting in the rest of the house look awful, no matter how many times we've cleaned & vaccuumed it, because there's still more dust and scraps that get tracked on it) I've gotten used to this being the "normal" state of affairs.
From this, I have to surmise that one of the challenges of life, especially for the Christian, is to be able to acknowledge the world as it is, but still remember it as it ought to be, and not get discouraged - nor forget what the Ideal is - in working toward that goal.
Hebrews 11:10 (NIV) - "For he was looking forward to the city with foundations, whose architect and builder is God."