Definition: bringing back into existence or use;bringing back to an original condition
I have spent the last three years restoring my house. Not a huge restoration by most standards, mainly cosmetics with the usual structural requirements of a forty year old house--roof, furnace, water heater. I love doing it but it is not without its frustrations. You wonder if your house will ever be clean again; if that pile of lumber will ever diminish; will the garbage men take away everything in the pile. And just when you think you're near the end, something else comes up or you get another idea and back on the merry-go-round you go, willingly, or not. The real crazies finish up one house, sell it and purchase another house to do the same thing again. I might be one of the crazies...
For the last five years, I have been under renovation but, unlike my house, it has been much more challenging. There have been pride, pain, and loss in all their many forms. At times, just when I felt that I couldn't endure one more thing, something was either added to the load or removed from the stockpile, which wasn't much to start with. In short, I was dying in every sense of the word, except physically.
But the beauty of a renovation is that its ultimate goal is restoration. My personal renovation, while at times more extensive than it probably needed to be because of my resistance, has started to turn a corner. I have learned to submit myself to--well, not quite learned but certainly to be alot more trusting of--the Master Restorer. He has a plan. He wants me to refer Him to other people not just by word-of-mouth, but by demonstration of the quality of His work in me. How do I know that the restoration is beginning to show? Well, I have let go of some things that I was hanging on to--people, attitudes, expectations. Pride is still an on-going struggle--just another kind of self-sufficiency.
The bigger proof of this, though, was that the Restorer handed me a job the other day. He told me I could help. He hasn't told me how yet, and He hasn't shown me the tool He wants me to use, other than to say it's in His toolbox, not mine, and when the time is right He'll teach me what I need to know in order to use it.
He did tell me where the job is, though, and I'm excited...and a little scared. It's in Cambodia. It's in March. For two weeks. Or, it might be for a lifetime. I don't really know.
Restoration, I am beginning to discover, is a never-ending process!
