Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Rais'in the Roof

Today is supposed to be another hot summer day, near 100 degrees and heat index of 105. In these hot conditions it makes me want to lay around in my air conditioned home or get my brood to the pool faster then you can say fried egg. What I want to do today and what needs to happen today are two totally different things. For over two weeks now we have been tackling the project that most people run from when they hear what you are doing: re-roofing our house. Not just re-roofing, but redesigning our roof line to make it work with our new double garage. We have had a very narrow single garage our whole life and Dave's dad is a natural born expert in the carpenter service area, so he managed to draw up plans to make this new roof include expanding a garage wall, filling an empty gap between our home and existing garage, and wa-la...new double garage. Genius if you ask me.

I can't even put into words what it feels like to have someone show up at your home day after day and sweat through these nasty heat conditions to put a new roof on our house. He comes, smile in tack, and climbs back up even after he's trudged home soaking wet and weary from the day before. All I've done is make meals, serve water, and keep kids and have questioned a time or two...is all this work worth it? But he keeps coming, keeps serving, and every time I go out there...he keeps smiling. I go back inside and lay a baby down or prepare a snack and am reminded...it takes a lot of hard work to put a new and better protecting roof on a house. It takes the same sweat, hard work, and smiles to put that kind of shield over a home. Home, the place my children learn and grown and try and fail and find grace and meet Jesus and begin their story. Home, where my I hope others enter and feel welcomed and loved and encouraged and cared for. Home, where I hope my family looks forward to coming back to at the end of their day and finds safety in a place where they can be just who they were designed to be.

Building a stable roof over our home is similar to the hard surface roof going up as I speak. I look back at how we've done our life with these kids and with each other and we've chosen the harder route for sure at times. We've sweat a lot and cried and worked hard, really hard, to make what we're building stand firm in something bigger then us. And we've questioned along the way...is all this worth it? We've had to redesign our lives many times to make it work better for our family and what we're trying to accomplish here with these little souls under our roof. As good men have just showed up to work side by side my smiling and sweaty father-in-law, I am reminded that with our home building we have so many that show up for the hard work in here too. This roof can't go up on it's own or with one man. Our home can't be built by our hands alone. We have very intentional people stepping in and sweating hard with us to make all this come together... both house roof and home roof.

Shingles are getting scraped off and new ones being placed over top. As I watched some of our best friends scrape and scrape ugly, worn, not working anymore shingles I felt like I was understanding a bit more why my Savior lets me sweat through hard times in life. He is getting ready to re-shingle, to place new ones, better ones over me. Shingles not doing their job, must go, and sometimes a complete new design must be built. All of this takes time and requires work, hard work. I find I question myself when it feels the dirtiest and on the hottest of days, but know the roof will stand in beauty one day soon as each hand has laid it's shingle right where it goes. It's a slow process that takes careful design, but the Designer I am letting lead me is a bit of a Genius of His own. I just need to keep showing up with a smile on my face, even when the day before was brutally hot and sweaty, and trust that all this hard work now is definitely worth it. I am slowly learning to let more in to help me raise our roof and humbled at the hands and feet that voluntarily show up to complete such a task.

Today is another hot day...but guess who showed up with a smile already? Yup. Guess I can too today as I help re-roof a bit of my own...

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