Behind the Scenes

I am nesting.  Not because I am having a baby but more so because I am leaving our babies.  My husband and I are taking a trip next week for our 15th wedding anniversary and we are so excited: the thrill of visiting somewhere new, just the two of us, on our own schedule.  But in order for us to get on that airplane we both have a lot of things that need to be taken care of.

For my husband, its work.  He is a pastor and we just launched a campaign for our new building.  There’s a whole lot of excitement, evening meetings most nights of the week, and regular responsibilities to be done.  He was also out of state last week for a conference so we were just getting our groove back of being together again as a family.  Why are we taking an anniversary trip right now you might be wondering? Well, this has been in the works for five years. One of our mentors told us to take a trip just the two of us every five years.  This marks 15 years and we are on our third trip, each one looking much more different than the previous (mostly due to our kids getting older).

They probably don’t remember much about our last trip but we sure do. We had a great time but our youngest son was struggling immensely while we were gone.  We focused on each other and enjoyed each other’s company but a part of us ached for what we knew was taking place back at home. Now that most of those struggles aren’t a worry anymore, we are pumped for next week!

My Mistake

So, I decided that instead of getting the groceries we needed, meal prepping, cleaning the house, packing, making sure our son has all the supplements he needs while we are gone, tending to our new chickens we just moved outside this week, preparing for end of the year school activities, and a million other things that needed to be done, that I should take off the shower ledge in our shower.  Yep, you read that right.

That ledge has been driving me crazy for awhile now.  It was kind of coming off, had that moldy buildup around it.  Every time I saw it, I would mention to my husband that it needed to go.  But for some reason when I looked at it this morning I could take it no more.  So I took matters into my own hands.

Clearly it was the perfect time to do something like this…………..

I got the flathead screwdriver, the hammer, a scraper and was ready to take that ledge down.  We didn’t need that many ledges in our shower anyway. I thought I could just knock that baby off and we were as good as new.  My mistake. It turns out, there was a strategy to use to remove something like this ledge. It helps to take a blade and detach the shelf from the tile on the wall.  I was kind of doing that, but not really. I started to make some progress as a big chunk fell into the tub. Apparently it was made of ceramic or porcelain or something breakable like that.  I thought it was just plastic. I then realized that there was a big hole in the tile behind where the ledge was hanging. I guess in order to mount a nice heavy ledge like that you would cut the tile to fit around it.  So there I sat staring at the hole in the shower wall holding my hammer and screwdriver.

Do Not Lean on your own Understanding

Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.

Proverbs 3:5-6

I didn’t expect the wall to look like that.  I never once thought there would be a hole in my shower.  I wanted this problem fixed so that I could tend to the other things that required my attention, but I had shattered the shelf so I couldn’t just put it back up.  My husband was home when I started this project and didn’t say much to me when I started chiseling away. He was tending to the many things requiring his attention right then.  But when I saw the gaping hole in the shower I knew I made a mistake. What I had done couldn’t be undone.

Had I waited until after our trip, my husband and I could have researched a little more about installing shower ledges and maybe even learned that we might be needing to replace tile after removing the ledge.  Or even removed it in such a way that we could remount it after cleaning the area. Earlier in the morning we noticed our oven shorted out a little bit when we plugged something in next to it so we went through the entire breaker box yelling back and forth from the basement to see what lights/appliances/fixtures were on which breakers.  It was a whole thing. It still is. Until we can get that figured out I have a sign taped by the outlet that says “Do not use.” How could I possibly think it was a good idea to do some demo in our shower after that? I guess I wanted a quick fix and I wanted the problem to be taken care of. I struggle with that sometimes. I don’t like conflict and would rather not have it, so I react quickly and try to solve it on my own.

God’s Plan Is Better, and unlike us, He sees what’s going on Behind the Scenes

After several years of being a wife and a parent I have learned a lot about Grace.  What a loaded word that is. When I started to tear apart our shower and realized I was getting into something I didn’t know how to fix, I felt like a kid being sent to the principal’s office.  I screwed up and there were going to be consequences. I tried to “fix this” all on my own without anybody’s help and dug myself a little deeper. I had to tell my husband we now had a hole in the shower, that my plan didn’t go the way I expected.  He texted me and asked how it was going and I wrote him back and said “I got all that mold out honey” and attached a picture of the shower wall with holes staring back at us. He then asked what we were going to do next and I told him I would take care of it.

A couple of trips to Menards (getting the wrong thing) and an order arriving from Amazon got me thinking;

So many times we don’t see the big picture of what is going on behind the scenes in our lives. We can try and guess but we can never get that big picture.

Sometimes there is a ledge in the way to block our view.    We can try and take matters into our hands but so often it can crumble and slip through our fingers.  My sweet husband. Not once did he say “Why did you do that??“ or “Great, now we need to spend more money.”  He was full of grace. It reminded me again why I love him so much. I had no idea that my shower ledge was going to teach me so much about grace and trusting God’s plan for my life.

What are you trusting God with right now?  Would love to hear in the comments below.

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