The Joys of Homeownership

When I decided last fall that I would buy a house, who knew what a challenge it would be? (Besides other people who have bought a 60-year-old house, of course.) I still like my house, the location, and what not. But it seems as if I take one step forward and two steps back these days.

Starting out, I knew I need to do some slight fixing up in the house - some paint, a few window treatments, shelf liner in the kitchen cabinets, and a major cleaning job. I thought, well, I'll just take it one room at a time and pretty soon I'll be done!

Wrong!

So far I've managed to repaint two out of six rooms (and one of those is a bathroom so it barely even counts). Along the way I've inherited some new jobs, such as the malfunctioning toilet in one of the bathrooms and having to put an electric wire on the fence to keep the dog from getting out (which I still haven't finished). Speaking of the dog, he completely finished off the couch today, so I need another one of those, too. I also decided, with the generous help of my patient boyfriend, to take down the front yard fence and pull up a lot of dead bushes (which, truth be known, he's done most of that work himself).

Anyway, today I decided to sit down and make a list of all the things that I need to do to at least get the house up to where I'd want to have a party or something. The list was much more comprehensive than I had anticipated. I mean, it covered a whole sheet of legal pad paper!

When I decided on this sweet, little house, it reminded me of my paternal grandparents' house in Ohio that I visited a couple of times a year when I was growing up. I miss that house now that they are gone. Plus, it also kind of made me think of Charlie Brown's Christmas tree - it just needed a little love. It's a great house with a big kitchen and master bedroom and a large, pretty backyard. But I never realized that lack of time and a 65-pound boxer would make it more of a fixer-upper than I had anticipated. It's overwhelming sometimes.

There are times with life itself overwhelms us, when it seems as if everything is happening at once and we are not quite sure how to deal with it. But in the noise of all the chaos surrounding us, God asks us to do one thing: Be still. There are a couple of times in the Psalms (46:10, 37:7) when we are reminded to do this. Sometimes it's necessary to take action, to go and do. But there comes a time when all we need to do is be still and let God be God. Let Him do His thing! He will come through every time.

One of these days, hopefully sooner rather than later, I'm going to be able to blog to you about all the work I've done on my cute little bungalow and how it looks just like I envisioned it would. That is, if I'm not too old to see the computer screen by then.

Have a great weekend!