Friday, May 26, 2006

A Crack in the Wall

When you own a home, there are a certain number of ‘projects’ that are always lurking for you. When these are done, several more will rise up in their place. Having just bought a house, here are a few of my projects: refinish old wood floors, remodel bathroom, install flooring in kitchen and dining room, put up fence in backyard, resuscitate grass, uncover window that was boarded up for no apparent reason, re-rock fireplace, paint, replace fake wood paneling… These are not all short-term projects, but things that we’d like to get done in the next few years. None of them are absolutely essential, just things we’d like to do.

LuAnn and I have talked about another project, as well. Our kids will be using the basement, so we’d like to put in an egress window (basically a window close enough to the floor, and big enough, that you can escape a fire - or more accurately, so that a fireman can climb in and drag you out). This involves a pretty substantial removal of basement wall concrete in order to install the larger window. Translate that – big, hairy, & expensive. This is something that we’ve decided can wait a while.

That changed Wednesday night. Instead of hitting golf balls with friends as I had planned, I was tearing out soaked carpet (and the tile it was glued to) and shop-vac-ing (yes, I know that’s not really a word) water out of the basement. (Eric, thanks a ton for your help!) Apparently, the wall between the inside bedroom and the outside flower bed is not watertight. Who knew!

As we proceeded to clean up, we took some panel off the wall to discover a gaping hole in the wall. (Ok, it wasn’t gaping, and it was more of a crack than a hole, but… that’s where the water was coming in so I’ll call it a gaping hole if I want to.) And, once the wall is repaired (still waiting for bids on how that job will go), that’s where the egress window will go.

It’s funny how something you’d been thinking about doing can become something you must do NOW. Maybe there’s something going on in your life like this. Maybe God’s just revealed a huge spiritual crack in your wall that’s begging to be fixed. Maybe you’ve got a hole that’s letting things leak into your life that don’t belong there. Maybe there’s some area of ministry you’ve been thinking about for a while, and NOW is the time to act.

Stop thinking about it. Do what you must do.

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