Have You Ever Wished You Had a Giant Dumpster in Your Front Yard?

O.K., be honest. Have you ever wished just for a moment that you could back a giant dumpster up to your garage and start filling it up with all the stuff that's accumulated in your house for years? There have been times when I've wished it...I won't lie. But, I wasn't wishing for it the week before last when our washer flooded the entire upstairs and most of our basement.

I wasn't wishing for it, but it turns out that the experience has been quite cleansing. The Great Gerken Flood 2011, like many things in my life, isn't something I would have asked for. In fact, I was shocked and devastated the moment I walked into the chaos that began a week ago Thursday and continues as I look around my house at plywood floors ten days later. But like all difficult, stripping things we walk through in this life, there has been great beauty and blessing rising up from the ashes (or the flood waters, rather). Great freedom in letting go. I sorted through my mother's boxes and cried the ugly cry. But, it is finished now, and I feel a bit lighter. We tore up most of the flooring in our tiny house...the last bit being the bathroom, which will be coming up soon.

This disorganized messy, who would much rather wax poetic on my blog, weaving tales with words than sort, organize, clean and care for the home that I used to take such pride in as a young bride...is singing a much different tune. I'm not loving every minute of it. Waking up each day and knowing that I will work on my house until my bones and muscles cry out from the aching is new for me. I'd much rather curl up with a good book, frolic in the swimming pool, play a round of golf. I have been flung into a world that has been mostly avoided and neglected for the past six years or so. Windows with years of film...neglected by the woman of the house...along with wood work that needs cleaning, walls that need painting, furniture that needs dusting, curtains that need washing. Somehow the cleaning up of all the debris, the sorting through years of stuff, only reveals more that needs cleaning.

But, it's a good hurt. It's a good hurt for me to humbly realize all that I've neglected. It's a good hurt to see God's grace in revealing it to me...and quite frankly everyone else in my life...including the strangers who drive by and see my full dumpster in the front yard. There is freedom in the stripping...freedom in the clearing away of unnecessary debris. Granted, I am sad for some of the things filling that dumpster. But, they are just things after all. And, as my house gets pruned, stripped, and cleaned, I feel the Lord pruning, stripping, and cleansing away a lot of the unnessessary stuff in me. Revealing what needs to be healed, and pouring His grace over each wound.

Out from beneath the rubble, we pulled the best "Kid's Meal" prize in the history of "Kid's Meal Prizes"...Timothy's Woody toy that he received as a preschooler from a Burger King Meal. I squeezed his tummy and heard as clear as the first time, "You're my favorite deputy." A big sigh from my mama-heart as I showed my now seventeen year old boy his old toy.

As I work each day, the memories flood my mind and heart. When the floors were stripped away, revealing the plywood subfloor beneath, I remembered young Timothy, just shy of two years old, riding his school bus through the house on the same newly built floors before my signature 1995 burgundy/mauve carpet was laid, his toddler chatter echoing through the rooms. Tim and I were just nineteen years old when we built our little house. This week, my house filled with ladies who generously donated the day to paint almost every room in my house, I was overwhelmed with the beauty of their gift...overwhelmed with the love and generosity. My mother-in-law brought a posse of painters to join the boys and me, and my friend Lynnette showed up with her two strapping sons and lasagna for dinner. As Lynette, Tracy, and I scraped the border and taped the trim the day before, I thought of my mother helping me hang border for the first time. As I took down the curtains she gave me, I smiled, knowing if she were here she would be all up in this surprise remodel.

We smoothed a fresh coat of paint over James' room, and I remembered the months we waited for our baby girls, planning a pink nursery with my mother. Then, later hoped for Thomas to fill the green room with little boy fun. And, the years we were resigned to make it a spare room instead of a nursery...until a sweet surprise came in the form of our James. I remembered the years I spent wishing for a bigger house, and the years I spent learning to be grateful for this little house. I thought of my mother as I rolled the fresh paint on the walls, and how the touches of a woman make up her home...telling the story of her life.

Right now, I am grateful for the cleansing...grateful for the healing...grateful for the Lord's ability to make beauty from ashes...

And, as I close my eyes at the end of each day, sometimes crying cleansing tears...sometimes tears of gratefulness and awe...I hear Him whisper to my heart..

"Behold...I make all things new..."