Our Story Will Always Be A renovation Story

​There are days I can get to believing my life has been a demolition project. A life spent dodging and not dodging an invisible (and sometimes NOT so invisible) wrecking ball.

The truth of the matter is, though, my life has REALLY been a renovation.

I recently noticed workers gutting the insides of an old house that had been crumbling on a local corner lot for years. The house has been a bit of an eye sore. I thought, if those workers think they're going to do something with that dilapidated heap of lumber, then they fancy themselves as miracle workers, not carpenters.

Slowly but surely, though, an actual miracle has begun to happen. No longer an eye sore, the house is becoming something I think many would feel lucky to live in.

It reminds me of a favorite bible story in Genesis. It's the story of a young teenager named Joseph. He has a bunch of brothers who get jealous of him and strip him of his clothes and throw him in a pit to die. A house doesn't get more wrecked than being thrown in a pit to die.

As circumstances would have it, though, a tribe of people traveling to Egypt passed by and the brothers decided to lift Joseph out of the pit and sell him to these people. In a very long Genesis story made short, Joseph would rise from the pit and go on to be the second most powerful man in all of Egypt.

If you read through the Genesis narrative of Joseph's life, you'll discover the main key to his transformation was that he never saw his house nearly as wrecked as everyone else did. Even from a young age, Joseph seemed to recognize he was in the middle of a renovation, not a demolition.

That's hard to do, isn't it? To see and feel the good in a wrecking ball?

I've talked to so many people lately who are going through tough challenges. There are job losses and job worries. There are relationship struggles. There are countless health concerns. There is loss and there is grief. There are so many people who are naked and at the bottom of a dark pit with no light to be found.

All I can say is I get it. I get it because I've been there. I get it because some days I still wake up in the pit, pop my head out ever so cautiously, just certain I'm about to be smacked by that stupid wrecking ball.

I'm grateful, though, that today I also get renovation. I am that house that people have walked by and thought, who on earth do those people think they are trying to make anything livable out of that heap of a mess. Yet, here I sit, remodeled, writing about renovation and hope.

Not hope because I'm overwhelmed with a "life is good" feeling. Not hope because I have no worries in life. Not hope because I'm confident no one is ever going to throw me in a pit again. No - my hope is based on the truth that every time I've been in a pit before, God has pulled me out and made me a better version of the pre-pit me.

My hope is found in remembering that every time I've shown a willingness to rise from my demolition, God has been waiting with a renovating hand.

Today, if you feel like someone is tearing your house down, remind yourself you've been here before. This isn't the first time you've mistaken a complete and beautiful makeover of your life for a total demolition. In the middle of the makeover, it's easy to feel like we're incapable of being the product of a miracle renovation.

It's easy to feel like we aren't WORTHY of it.

Fortunately, we have a miracle carpenter in our corner. His greatest gift is making a beauty only he can imagine out of a destruction we can't begin to imagine our way out of. God has never seen us as an eyesore. If we feel like one - that's our demolition talking, not our renovation.

We are all on our way to a beautiful renovation. Some days we simply need to believe that. Have faith in that. Trust that on the other side of the wrecking ball a renovation is coming.

We are never made whole this side of eternity.

Our story will ALWAYS be one of renovation. That is, if we allow ourselves to embrace that story.