Renovation

I'm not entirely sure how to even start this particular post so I'm just going to take a little walk and see where I end up. Life is kind of like a house. You may buy a house thinking it's the perfect size and you'll never have to do any major updates, changes to it. Then you live in the house for a little bit (you can pick the number of years for my 'house' or life it was 14 years, at least) and you realize wait that foundation isn't as sturdy as I thought it was. Oh no wait is that a crack in the wall, let me just hang up a picture to hide that. Or maybe you think you know this house is to small  I need to add on to it but then you add on to it and only realize those rooms just became a catch-me-all and just added more clutter. Or perhaps you have gotten comfortable in that one room you stay in in your house and you don't even realize what is in the other rooms in your house. Can I tell you a little about my house? For the past ten years my house has been built on a solid foundation but I didn't trust that foundation (that is just this wannabe writers way of saying I wasn't trusting God). You see sometimes things happen and we renovate our houses when they don't need it, we think we're making it safer but that's not always the case. Sometimes when I try to renovate things all by myself I just don't find and use the best ingredients. When I renovated my house long ago I started putting up walls that were built from fears and lies (I do not recommend this because my goodness those walls can become quite difficult to tear down because for me they gave me an extremely false sense of security thinking I, well way to many things to even get into in this post, but it was keeping me from getting to the other rooms in my house and even to the outside to others like I wanted and should). You see I'd built onto the walls so long that even though I had gotten a few holes busted in the wall over the years I couldn't quite get them torn down to get to the other rooms like I wanted to. But thank God those walls are getting torn down for real this time, not me trying to do the fixing but just having faith the trust and let God. I don't know about other people but sometimes I get tired of the way my house is decorated so I need to rearrange things or just start over. Change scares me but staying the same scares me more. Staying in that room kept me from so much and I'm discovering so much. Am I so naive to think this feeling that I'm feeling will last forever? No, not at all. They say you can't have a testimony without a test. You can't have growth without being in the ground, being watered and tended to for a while. Then once you start growing (or the flower, since suddenly I've decided to go that analogy) you don't just stop watering it or hide it in the closet so it can't get any sunlight. And there may be times that no matter how much you take care of that flower it don't look so good and you aren't so sure it'll make it but you don't quit taking care of it and one day oh my how it blooms even more beautifully than you've ever seen. Just like in the house sometimes you got to not worry about how many bugs might fly in you just got to open the windows and let some fresh air in, you got to knock that wall down and just see what's on the other side. We all have a purpose and we all matter and I know that what was the reason behind why I hid so long behind those walls is only going to get me to my purpose and hopefully help me help others. So when you're looking at your house (life) don't get stuck in just one room, don't be afraid to trust the foundation (God), open the doors every so often because it's amazing what you can learn from others when you take the time to listen. We all have stories and though yours may not be something I've personally dealt with I can still learn something and it just may be that my story is something that you are struggling with and you think no one understands but I just may get to share it with you one day and you have a get out, you too! moment. My hope is that I always care about people and somehow show that they matter and have a purpose. I said on my thirty first birthday that I felt like a new start like how they say the new year is a new beginning and I'm excited about the renovations that are going on in my life. Now you didn't think you'd get through one of my posts without some quotes from a song or poem or something did you? Good cause I got a couple. One of my favorite poems is If by Rudyard Kipling and one of my favorite parts of the poem is:

If you can keep your head when all about you   

    Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,   

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

    But make allowance for their doubting too;   

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

    Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

    And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise

Also earlier I mentioned starting over and there is a great song, on of many on my long list of songs I love, that is called Start Over by Flame featuring NF.  Now this song has parts in it that give glimpses into my story (I've recently heard a few songs by NF on his album Mansions and I have a get out! moment and thing that's exactly how I am/was (I say am because I am forever a work in progress and growing in my faith and walk with God) but it's nice to hear it explained in ways I never really knew how to explain why). Anyway it starts out with:


Everybody's got a blank page
A story they're writing today
A wall that they're climbing
You can carry the past on your shoulders
Or you can start over
Regrets, no matter what you goin' through
Jesus, He gave it all to save you
He carried the cross on His shoulders
So you can start over

Actually here is the video (the dude raps so if you don't like that then there's your warning but I recommend listening because you can follow what he says and the lyrics are powerful, a reminder that I sure need to hear). And I'll end this with the video so until next time.