Old House

He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

—Philippians 1:6

Some of my struggle to love our old house in Grand Rapids, unfortunately, was about what other people thought. I’m fairly certain that our house was the bad house in the neighborhood, that our neighbors were whispering to each other disapprovingly. One day when a woman drove by very slowly, like she was giving us the once-over, I had to stop myself from screaming out the window, “We’re doing the best we can! We’ve only been here like five minutes!”

But I didn’t know that lady. The person having a problem with the house, clearly, was me. And it wasn’t about the house. It was about me. I couldn’t handle any more things that were not quite right in my life, because I felt like that’s all I had. I’m a lot like that old house, cracked and mismatched and patched over.

On my very best days, I practiced letting it be an old not-fixed-up house, while I practiced being a not-fixed-up person. I walked around my house, looking at all the things that I should fix someday, and I imagined God noticing all the things about me that should get fixed up one day, and loving me anyway and being okay with the mess for the time being.