8/1/2020
We finished the bunk beds a day earlier than scheduled, so that meant we needed a new task. Reclaim wasn’t ready for another project yet, but they have friends living nearby who are in the wedding business with their farm property (barns are a very popular wedding venue if you didn’t know) who have been financially hit by Covid-19 because of wedding cancellations. So, we went to bless this family by helping them in any ways we could. It turns out that for one thing they actually have a wedding scheduled they need to clean for and they have a big building that needs painting.
I’m told Reclaim was so impressed by our work that they had absolute faith in us to go and help their friends and they emphasized to them just how great we were. I’m not saying this to brag. I’m saying this to tell you that it’s emotional to know you can impact someone that deeply and greatly just by doing your best unprofessional work to help them. And I say this because we could have spent Friday at Reclaim with not much work to do, enjoying some time for fun and laughter and games, but the people of Reclaim wanted to share us with their friends. The people of Reclaim saw a need and a way to fulfill it and even though they loved having us around so much, they wanted to share the blessing with others who needed young, able-bodied workers to do some work. I’m seriously touched by that fact. There was no greed in the hearts of the people of Reclaim, but only generosity to give abundantly the things they could give, including us.
So, the next day, Friday, we headed out to help a new family that we knew very little about other than that they could use our help. I talked with the matriarch of the family in the evening when they treated us to a spaghetti/alfredo dinner and she told me the barn itself they were able to hire professional painters for, but then Covid hit and they lost their income and they have been trying to do all of the painting and everything else on their own now.
Let me tell y’all, it was a huge project. A huge building needing paint. I wanted so desperately to be able to complete this task for them with 7 of us painting and 4 cleaning, but in one day I knew that dream couldn’t be a reality. It was a hard balance between making sure it was being done the best it could be and making sure it just got done.
Parts of the building are hit so much by sun that the paint was badly cracked and chipped. I took on the task of scraping with a pretty small little scraper. It was slow work, but it made me really think and reflect. I watched the layers of old paint and splintered wood chip off that building, and I thought about how ugly that building looked like that. But then I thought about how beautiful it would look after it was freshly painted. And then I thought about how quickly the new paint would chip away if we didn’t remove the old, cracked, chipping paint and splinters underneath because they would have no good foundation to cling to.
And then I thought about how our lives are like that too. We have these old, ugly, dead, chipped parts of our lives that hold us back and keep us from being the best people we can be. It’s easy to try and change too fast and try to put on new, beautiful things and habits without first taking the time to scrape away the junk underneath. But when we do that, those habits and beautiful things don’t stick very well in our lives. It’s easy to try and add an exercise routine without first examining the unhealthy eating habits that got us to a point of being overweight, but those routines fade pretty quickly when we don’t really have a foundational motivation to keep them going.
And then, looking at that ugly, scraped wall, I realized how vulnerable it looked. It no longer had the chips on top that provided the little protection it had before. It was simply a bare, uncovered wall. I think that’s us too. It feels so vulnerable when we strip away those chips and pieces of junk in our lives. Before we’ve replaced them with those new habits and beautiful things all we are is an uncovered, vulnerable piece of wood with the foundation fully exposed. It’s uncomfortable and painful even to have our deepest, most inner foundation exposed to the world, but we have to start there in order to finish the business of rebuilding our lives into the best and most God-honoring lives they can be.
So, now that we’ve established the metaphor of how much this work made me think, I’ll tell you how the rest of the day went. Two of us working with scrapers would have taken our entire day and no paint would have made it onto the building. Fortunately, the brilliant idea was had to use a sander to get the chips off and smooth the wood. Ryan, Hannah, and Erica E. are beasts with the sander. And so that kicked our progress into high gear and we got the entire side wall that we were working on almost completely covered in primer before lunch time. We worked hard to get brown and red paints onto the wall after lunch, but the end of the day came and we didn’t finish.
We did our best, more than the family probably expected, but we didn’t finish.
And we don’t get to go back another day to do more work. All we had was one day to bless this family and that’s what we did, but we didn’t finish the work.
And that’s hard for a team of hard workers like us who just love to bless people and do God’s work.
But we were only called to be here for one day. We were only called to bless this family by doing as much work as we could do because now they don’t have to do it themselves. Older people who shouldn’t be climbing roofs and ladders to spend hours in the sun painting don’t have to do all that work themselves. We are a blessing to them.
But it is hard to leave behind unfinished business.
All we can do is trust God to take care of this family and this work.
What we need to accept is that it was never really our work to begin with. It was always God’s work. It will always be God’s work. He knows what He’s doing. He’ll take care of it.
I don’t need to worry. I do need to rejoice in the work I did and in knowing we did our best to bless this family. I know they’re rejoicing because of an unexpected phone call that gave them one day of 11 workers to bless them. I won’t take that for granted.
