Tearing Things Up And Crushing It: Part 3- A New Thing

As promised, I’m revisiting the construction topic I introduced to you last week. Things have continued to be a whirlwind in this area. We’ve packed up entire rooms of stuff on to learn that we don’t need to do so. We’ve even had a few injuries along the way. And we’ve certainly grown closer to each other in the process and have developed a new understanding of the term easy-going.

I spent much of last Sunday afternoon ripping stucco off the walls with my housemate/landlord Dan (derivatives trader who eats like a 6-year-old and drives like a maniac). There’s at least one stucco-filled room on each floor of the house. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, picture a bumpy wall produced by gobs of paint and plaster, that’s supposed to add texture and interest, but ultimately adds mess. In some rooms, these bumps are subtle, but on the first floor, i.e. the bachelor pad, they are rather pronounced.

Our task was to file down the uneven stucco so that our plaster guru could come and in and cover it to produce flat, smooth walls (not a super technical description, I know). In most rooms we could simply chip off the protruding stucco bumps. But Dan and I were having a hard time in the hallway of the first floor, where it was stucco on steroids. We started with our chipping technique, but at one point we each produced a hole in the stucco that tore all the way down to the original plaster wall. Below the stucco that we saw on the surface were several more layers of paint and wallpaper, going back what was probably decades’ worth of wall. Once we opened one hole in these layers, we could grab it and pull all the way across, to strip down the entire span of wall to its original surface.

I would be lying if I said we were any less than terrified at what we produced. It was ugly. In some cases that original plaster wall was completely crumbling and punctured. At best, it looked utterly exposed and barren. We were also worried that the contractor would not be able to properly affix the new plaster to the raw material that we had exposed.

On the other hand, ripping things down the root and removing all the wallpaper and paint clutter could have been a very good thing. Removing the decaying wall materials could have provided a clean slate for our plaster expert to work off of, reconstructing a better wall than we originally could have expected. But we had no way of knowing this. We wavered in where we stood on this all afternoon, but ultimately decided to continue what we had started and ripping things down the bare bones. The next morning we held our breaths, until hearing that we had done good and that the raw exposed wall was a great surface to work from.

And yes, there’s a lesson in all this. If I had to sum it up, it would be:

2) Look below the surface. In thinking about the things in my life that don’t look great on the surface, much like the stucco, there’s usually something even worse (the layers of wallpaper and paint) below that is really the problem. So in our lives, rather than simply trying to correct a habit or behavior that shows up to the outside world, I think God wants us to get at the root of what pushes us to do certain things. This can be feelings of unworthiness, past hurt, insecurity with the present, fear of the future, anger, jealousy, hopelessness, and so many other things.

The good news is that He’s the one that does this work, not us. He’s happy to build with our raw, exposed selves, no matter how scary and ugly we think it looks. Forgot trying to build on top of the layers on the surface, just because we are afraid to expose what is beneath. He doesn’t want us to hold onto our baggage, our insecurity, our constant justifications, and our false pretenses. He wants us to give our all to Him, to do a new thing. Here’s a verse that I think explains the refreshing that comes from God when we get rid of the old.

"Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?” Isaiah 43:18-19

Sure, it might be easier to just chip away the bumps on the surface and smooth out what’s on top, but like our stripped down wall was ultimately a better root to construct the new wall on top of, I think the greatest spiritual growth comes when we are willing to examine and rip everything out that has piled on top of the relationship that we are meant to have with God. That’s it for construction lesson #2. Thanks for listening to me make spiritual similes out of (former) stucco walls. I’ll be sure to let you know how the new, smooth walls turn out.

Also, here's a picture of the house, for those of you who are interested! Photo credit to my housemate/landlord Tara (who lives on the third floor and works in campus ministry with her husband).