Restoration

Since the end of May, Wesley and I have spent the majority of our time renovating our home. We started with the “small” project of repainting our cabinets and replacing our counters. The big project immediately followed: We tore up the vinyl flooring and put in wood tile. We planned to complete both projects in two weeks… we are on week four and looking forward to week five. Our home is still in complete disarray as all is packed away while we finish the project. It turns out that we were a little too ambitious. When we are finished, I will share all the details of this project, but today I wanted to share with you how this process has reminded me of grief.

This is part one. Wesley will give his perspective on this same topic this summer as well.

When we began this project, it completely halted our lives. Every moment, every conversation, every action we took revolved around our home. Our children’s lives were altered as we had to change up their routine to tear up our home and bring it back into order—something we’re still doing.

Grief is similar. Time stops. For a long time, everyone around us was living their normal lives, but we were not. Every moment, every conversation, and every action revolved around loss. I think it’s good for the griever to remember that it is okay that everyone else’s lives move on. Although there was a time where our worlds stopped, time didn’t actually stop.

I think of Ecclesiastes 3:1-8.

For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven:

a time to be born, and a time to die;
a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
a time to kill, and a time to heal;
a time to break down, and a time to build up;
a time to weep, and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
a time to seek, and a time to lose;
a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
a time to tear, and a time to sew;
a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
a time to love, and a time to hate;
a time for war, and a time for peace.

When we were in the depths of grieve, especially the very first year, it was both a time for us to break down and begin the process of building up. These things take time. They are skills that most of the people around us don’t need.

For us who have grieved deeply, the world stopped, and it needed to stop. Our hearts are in a construction zone and it must be attended to until order begins to returns.

Another, and rather unexpected, part of the renovation process was finding out what was under our floors. We found a lot of dirt, water, mildew, and mold. We ended up tearing out most of our baseboards which revealed multiple portions of the walls that had damage we had not seen or known about.

Likewise, when the bottom of our lives fall out, it exposes and exasperates problems that were already there, and now, they can’t be ignored.

We can choose to continue to let the mold, the mildew, and whatever else we find continue to disrupt our lives, or we can tear it out along with the floors

Of course, when you're in the worst of circumstances, all you want to do is ignore the new problems and find a way to get to the other side. Cover the mold back up. Ignore the mildew. Cut corners so that the misery is over as soon as possible. It is always the hardest choice to tear out the bad and rebuild. Literally and metaphorically.

A week ago, Wesley and I tore the moldy walls out. In the long run, we knew our family’s health depended on it. We would literally breathe better. Not only that, we plan to save some money for an air scrubber next year to monitor our air health and quality in our home.

Grief has been the same. When grief arrived at our door it exposed and exasperated a few heart issues we already had. For me, it was anxiety. It was (and arguably still is) a major concern to be attended to within my heart, mind, and soul. At the time of Aurelia’s death, I had hidden it well. I had even convinced myself that it wasn’t so bad. Yet, in the first months after we faced Aurelia’s death, and later as we welcomed sweet Behr into our home, it could not be hidden. The effects physically took over my body, controlled my mind, and fear was the posture of my heart.

There was no hiding from it anymore.

I was exhausted, experiencing a range of postpartum hormones, and I didn’t want to deal with it. Still, I had to come to the conclusion that to be a functional wife, mother, and servant of the Lord, it was necessary. I had to process through the grief and all that bubbled up with it. Anxiety is something I may find God always sanctifying in my heart. Maybe it is a cup he will eventually relieve me of—no matter the outcome, I know my job in the here and now is continuing to step forward in faith and asking him to transform and renew my mind each day disciplining my thoughts to the words of Philippians 4:8-9.

“Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.”

Renovating our home has taken long nights, aching bodies, monotonous work, many trash loads (Wesley says 1,860 lbs. and counting to be exact), a whole lot of frozen meals, pizza, and a lot of time laying mortar and tile.

At first, the process was shaky. We made a mess. My arms were chaffed from my fingertips to my elbows from the rough mortar. We walked out in the dark every night to dump water buckets and clean out other buckets of old mortar. We knew nothing about the process. Simply trial and error as we worked our way through. Some nights we found ourselves bleeding, every day was filled with sweat, and it was common to find tears at the end of the day.

Still, somewhere near the end of the first week, we began to find a rhythm. The work became cleaner, our routines became smoother, and suddenly, we were one unit—albeit in pain—working swiftly and efficiently together as one. One room was completed and another, and then suddenly, we were looking at the end of the project and seeing all the hard work we had done.

Somehow, our floors had gone from cracking and broken vinyl to beautiful porcelain wood tiles. The hard work brought something beautiful.

I keep thinking about that in our grief.

In all the misery, I so often forget how ugly the beginning was and how beautiful restoration can be, not just in Heaven, but on Earth too.

This past week, Wesley and I met with a therapist we see together. We were sharing with her about the crazy month we’d had and mentioned how we were actually supposed to replace these floors the year Aurelia died. We began to talk about several other things we had planned to do in 2024 that we are just now getting to.

Death halted our lives. For two years we have spent our time picking up trash, clearing the floors, and laying one tile at a time across the foundation of our lives.

Everything was cancelled. New routines and rhythms were formed, and now we’re almost in the same place in our grief as we are in life with our renovation—beginning to see the restoration God is doing in our lives.

“Does it feel like you’ve come full circle?” the therapist said.

“Yeah, it feels like time is moving again,” I said.

Wesley agreed.

Grief in the beginning is certainly life stopping, life altering, and goes on for longer than most of us can imagine. Yet, God is always restoring. Each tile laid is just a little more progress and moving a little bit closer to learning to live in a broken world again. It’s the practice of holding joy and sorrow together. It’s slowly and painfully allowing God to sanctify every corner of your broken, cracked, and sinful heart.

I am thankful that I have the hope of seeing my family whole again one day, but through this project, I am thankful for the reminder that even in our pain and suffering God is still restoring our lives in the here and now. He does not abandon us, He comforts us in our afflictions. He brings joy and strength when we need it most.

Psalm 23 comes to my mind often over the last few weeks. The same short line echoing in my heart.

“He restores my soul.”

And, oh, I am so grateful to it.