My in-laws recently bought a house that is falling apart. The siding was ugly, the paint peeling off, and the yard was terribly over grown. The inside of the house was even worse. My father in-law is an expert contractor and has been doing this work his entire adult life. When they bought the house, the first thing he did was tear down the parts that were unsustainable. The moldy parts, the damaged flooring, the old windows—it all had to go.
He’s been working on this project tirelessly, six days a week all summer. He recently sent us a video of the progress he’s made. He was excited to share and I was excited to see what he’d done. I love a good comeback story. I sat down and pressed play. I saw a torn up yard. I saw the same ugly siding and peeling paint. A good deal of the house still looked exactly the same, actually—but maybe even worse because there was a lot that had been torn down and the yard now looked uglier than it had before because there was now no grass at all.
And yet my father in-law, the expert builder, called this progress.
When I went through a divorce, I moved home with my parents and sister. A lot of my friends were booking jobs on Broadway, performing six nights a week; I was crying in the basement of my childhood home seven nights a week (although I would’ve preferred a lighter schedule. There really should be a union for the grieving, huh? Who was it that said, ‘May all those who suffer have a day off’?). I kept thinking, Okay, I’m ready to move on. Ready to have something exciting happen to me. I’m ready to get to tell the world of an amazing boyfriend who would never do what my husband did. I’m ready to add to my resumé. I’m ready to get good and distracted from all this pain.
But none of those things happened. Instead what I did was confront my pain endlessly, or so it seemed. And when the pain became overwhelming, I’d write, or sing, or walk in the woods, or pray, or talk to someone. I’d find myself through the shadow of pain, feel around in the darkness until I got hold of the shape of my spirit still intact, still me. It was horrible and revelatory. It’s a revelation to discover that I am not ended by seasons ending. A revelation to find that humor still has a way of knocking on my mind, doing this over and over again until I finally answer. Until humor sits me down and begs me to notice. Then when I finally laugh, I wonder if I’m betraying grief. But to my surprise, grief hasn’t left the room. There is room for both after all.
And it’s horrible to be suffering in such a way that I can’t stop it—not like an arm that hurts, so you just don’t move it for a while until it’s better. When it’s your heart that hurts, you wince at life. You learn that every inch of it involves your heart. It’s like when you do a particularly taxing and also new workout and, the next day, feel sore in areas you didn’t even know had muscles. When you are grieving, you realize that all of life asks something of your heart. Why else would talking to your dog walker make you cry? Why else would attending an ugly Christmas sweater party solo—when you’re used to being a couple in this setting—make you gulp back sobs as you walk to your car a couple hours earlier than all of the other guests? Why else would the way those jolly guests who are still inside laughing and holding hands with their spouse and talking about things that don’t hurt—like vacations and holiday plans and the gifts they’ve already purchased this year feel like a reminder of what is no longer yours? Why else would you wander the airport at Christmastime and feel bruised by the festive holiday decorations? Because now tinsel makes you realize that you no longer get to celebrate, that grief has replaced not just a husband, but also a season you once loved, but now you just stare at hollowly, the way your eyes linger over a stranger whose face reminds you of someone.
After my divorce, I did slow, steady work that didn’t make me look very different from the outside. I wanted something sexier, but the thing that kept showing up when the man didn’t and the jobs didn’t either was my pain. So I dealt with my pain. I was honest with God. I asked Him to make me feel better. I meant RIGHT NOW! I’d like to feel better right now, please! But in His wisdom and kindness, His yes to that prayer meant He wanted me better for the long run. He wanted me to actually heal from the pain of a husband who betrayed me. He didn’t want me happily walking in circles (even though I would have gladly done that if it meant escaping from the pain. I would have done almost anything if it meant being happy). I didn’t know what forward movement looked like, but I thought it probably meant a new relationship or awesome job, preferably both.
I was wrong. Forward movement meant living with people who love me—it meant relying on some very old relationships. It meant spending a lot of time alone, working out my pain with some kind of artistic expression. It meant listening to my grief and letting it guide me to make art. It also meant calling people and simply crying. (Hi, do you have a moment to talk? And by ‘talk,’ I actually mean just listening to me sob on the phone?) Forward movement meant falling in love with someone who ultimately knew I wasn’t in a solid enough place to stand next to him. That it—us—worked for a season, but then I had to face more of my pain—this time, from the loss of him, too. The night he left, I wondered what God was doing.
I once heard a guy recite a poem under a full, low moon. The performer was barefoot in the grass, holding a beer. There wasn’t a stage involved. It wasn’t even planned, but I will never forget the way I felt listening to him. Like God wasn’t done. Like words are wild bulls, strong and powerful and surely beyond my reach, but here I am, watching a matador move with grace and precision among them. Here I am, watching the bulls comply. I listened to the guy speak the words of this poem and I forgot myself enough to join him under that moon. It was no longer him over there doing something and me right here observing. Now it was us, and we were doing something. He was embodying a poem, this living idea that touched my thoughts; it was water and my spirit a cup. It filled up to the brim in the space of that poem and I hadn’t even known there was room. There was a part when he wondered aloud if God is like a bully who squishes ants for fun, because God is big and they are not. I didn’t think God was a bully, but I did think I was a squished ant. And my faith for un-squishing was weak.
I didn’t know there is strength that gathers in rest. That character is defined by steadily and quietly doing good things—often in the dark. That though life can look like suffering alone, we can choose to invest in love, beauty, grace. We can decide to not only not add to the suffering, but to add to the connection with God, with each other, with art and joy and empathy and conversations that carve out deep places in our spirits so that they become wells, that hold more water in a dry and thirsty land. We can do this and remember that there are things, moments, that transcend suffering. And we can remember that it is good to be here.
I didn’t know that we don’t always see progress; we don’t see the seeds laying in the hidden parts of earth, dormant in the dirt, wondering if the earth has become their coffin. We don’t understand that burying deep into the ground is not only a way to grow, but the only way to grow. We don’t see the sprouting in the dark. Nobody celebrates it because it’s hidden. But it doesn’t make it less real. And it doesn’t mean that there isn’t life and growth and beauty and grace at work.
We talk about Friday and the cross, and we sure do talk a lot about Sunday and the empty grave. And we won’t stop, because this story feeds the world. But what about Saturday? What about the waiting? What about the body of Jesus in the ground? What about the people who’d believed this was a beginning and were now looking squarely at an end—at least what surely looked like an end as long as it was Saturday.
This is what I mean: there is foundational work that happens in a heart and it’s not what we put on a resumé. There is foundational work that happens in a heart and it’s not easily labeled. My father in-law has invested so much work in this fixer upper, and a lot of it is foundational. He’s not worried about the peeling paint. It’s aesthetic and he will absolutely paint over it at some point, but it’s not a priority because it doesn’t have much to do with the actual sustainability of the house. A house that is rocked by a storm might have a beautifully painted exterior, but because the foundation wasn’t sound, that paint didn’t matter. Because it was built on the sand and a storm came, the perfect paint job didn’t matter at all.
If you feel stuck in Saturday, I understand. If you’re waiting for an undetermined amount of time that feels a lot like forever, I understand. I’m not here to argue with your feelings. But I am here to say that as you continue to take the next best step—quietly, consistently, and most likely in the dark—trust that there is invaluable foundational work happening. It might not be something you can announce on social media—but that’s because foundational work is not an easy, cute caption. It’s deeper than that.
Something I keep reminding myself is that I am responsible to do the task God has put in my heart. It might be a hard task, so I am not discounting this. It might be the work of forgiveness or getting a degree or raising a whole entire child (it might be all three of those at once). But the good news is that we aren’t responsible for the outcome. That, I believe, is God’s work. We just do the task at hand, steadily, with consistency, with determination, working like we’ve got rent to pay. The outcome is God’s to deal with.
I watched the video my father in-law sent again. I saw the torn up yard, the work-in-progress sidewalk, the dilapidated porch and, of course, all that dingy peeling yellow paint. I thought, Wow, someone must see a lot of potential in that old house to put so much work into it. I thought about how transformation takes a long time, how it has much more to do with consistent work day after day than anything fast or cheap or sexy or able-to-be-shouted in one or two sentences on your social media feed.
It’s okay that you don’t have anything to announce. It won’t always be that way. You’re being built. Announcements will come; you’ll get to make them, too. But investing in your foundation—making sure that you are strong, able to stand, honest, patient, empathetic, selfless, humble, kind, grateful, hard working, resilient, brave, tender, that you know how to love—this work is no small thing. Don’t despise it. Embrace it—or at the very least, endure it.
And may your waiting be filled with encouragement and pockets of joy that keep you going.
Thank you for reading!
This is most beautiful. It's so often hard to embrace the process, and to be patient with ourselves in the midst of our own overhaul. But as you stated, God gives us encouragement along the way. Little, and sometimes, big, reminders that He is with us every step of the way. Peace and every good.