If you’ve ever lived through a kitchen demolition and renovation, I know you get it: my whole world feels topsy-turvy. Off kilter. A jumbled mess. Like somebody put my life in a cup like dice and shook it.
From day to day, my fridge migrates to the oddest places; I’ve been thinking about attaching one of those electronic locators so I don’t have to call in the neighbor’s bloodhound every time I want a sandwich.
Each morning I have to do an Easter egg hunt for my cereal bowl, which I found in my closet one day and the bathroom another. My dishwasher doesn’t seem to be anywhere at all (did I see one of the workmen loading it in his truck?) but my toaster oven is alive and well and happily decorating the TV.
In the midst of all this chaos, during a what-was-I-thinking moment, I volunteered to take a meal to the family of a friend who’d just had cancer surgery. So there I was mixing muffins in the garage at 5 a.m. and trying to break into a non-pop-top can of creamed corn with scissors. Nope. A box cutter? Nuh-uh. How about an ax?
I declare, before it was over, I would’ve traded my firstborn for a can opener.
I WANT MY KITCHEN BACK! And my sanity. And some peace would be lovely.
So wouldn’t you know, with His usual 3-steps-ahead MO, Papa God sent me this precise message in my morning devotional: “Because you belong to Christ Jesus, God will bless you with peace that no one can completely understand. And this peace will control the way you think and feel” (Philippians 4:7 CEV).
Ah. So that’s what I’ve been doing wrong – the peace comes first, from the inside – supernaturally, from my relationship-generated Jesus-joy, and THEN it controls my outside, the way I think and feel. Regardless of my topsy-turvy environment.
Okay. I think I’m ready to redo this reno demo, with a little more bang for my buck this time. This gal will always be a Fix-Her-Upper.
