Of Flour Sacks and Barber Poles

It was inevitable that I would be involved in home renovations. A love of pretty things and creativity in improving what I have is clearly something I inherited from my grandmother.


During the Depression, she didn't merely use the printed cotton flour sacks of her day to make underwear for her daughters, she crocheted lacy trim on them, too. She sewed a frilled cover for a dressing table made of wooden orange crates.
And years later, the doll clothes she made for me were intricate in their style details.


In my own case, I've had a love of old houses from an early age, preferring their crannies and quirks to the sensible lines of the bungalow (ranch) home I grew up in.

• There was a derelict, paint-chipped house on our school bus route that sparked my renovation imagination. In my mind's eye, I painted the exterior, planted flowers and covered the interior walls with coloured art paper. Hey, when you're 9 years old you have limited DIY skills. 

 Flowers + Paint = Home Sweet Home

• I mentally decorated our unfinished basement in a red, white and blue colour scheme, c. 1970, complete with barber pole striped teleposts. (What a mercy some dreams don't come true.)

But living in a fallen world, every God-given gift of creativity seems to carry a risk. Discontent and covetousness for starters. And that can lead to greed, idolatry, and the destruction of relationships as we pursue that perfect look.

God tells me I'm to be content with whatever I have (Heb. 13:5).

So can a creative God-given gift for home decor square with the Bible's admonition to be content with such things as you have? I believe it can and I'd love to hear how you have found ways to balance the two.

                                

A Rare Jewel... (and I don't mean The House)

 "...I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content."   (Phil. 4:11)

These words of the apostle Paul have been a challenge and an admonition to me over the years. But Jeremiah Burroughs, in his wonderful 1648 book, The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, (order it here) called contentment "a cordial to revive the drooping spirits of the saints".

When our family first moved to this acreage-in-the-middle-of-nowhere in 2003, I purposed to be content with it.

April 2003 -- A whole lot of potential...

It will be an adventure, we said, putting right a century home abused by time and some well-intended but misguided renovations.

The potential was "huge", the Realtor said; it just needed "some TLC to finish it".

I had no idea the process of renovation would be so agonizingly slow. Or just so agonizing, period. Eleven years later, we are still in the thick of renovating, though energy, enthusiasm and elves (our family work force) have waned.

I also had no idea God's renovation of my heart and soul would be so agonizingly slow or pervasive, touching every facet of my life.

"Christian contentment is that sweet, inward, quiet, gracious frame of spirit, which freely submits to and delights in God's wise and fatherly disposal [planning, provision] in every condition," Mr. Burroughs writes.

So the mice in our traps (almost one a day for the first two weeks) and the cold that first winter (because the furnace had yet to be moved from the main floor to the newly-dug basement) were all part of God's wise planning for us? Apparently so.

And the worst trial of all for ultra-visually-oriented me, the ugliness wherever I looked as we lived amidst the renovations -- that, too was all part of God's fatherly provision for us? Yup.

Burroughs goes on to emphasize, "...that to be well skilled in the mystery of Christian contentment is the duty, glory and excellence of a Christian."

Was I sweet, quiet, gracious through it all? Freely submitting to and delighting in it all?
That'll be the subject of future posts!

Just one more thing...

     When I was a girl, I used to dream about being poor.

     It wasn't poverty that was appealing. I knew nothing of that. It was the getting out of it -- the rags to riches -- that drew me.

     So I'd load my cats, Squeak and Smoky, into my wagon on a burlap sack (before burlap was chic) and off I'd go, seeking my fortune.

     Trouble was, I could always think of one more "essential" I needed to be able to make it, living by my wits. A blanket. Snacks. A book. My dolls. And that, right there, is my basic problem. Maybe yours too.

     It's always that "one more thing" that'll satisfy me. It's as true of material goods as it is in relationships and other areas of life.

     But God has given us everything we need for life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3). And that means everything necessary for contentment too.

        

     So join me as I blog on what I've learned about the balance between doing what I can with what I have, and "godliness with contentment, which is great gain." (1 Timothy 6:6).