As small business owners, our small business consumes a lot of hours. Did you know a house will just sit there and wait for you to do something with it? Considering we’ve lived in our house for 25 years, it’s been quite patient. However, there comes a time that said house needs some TLC that requires more than our usual weekends can afford. So, my husband and I blocked out a week on our calendars to dive into some big projects at home. We entitled it
Campcation:
All the comforts of home with the disorder and dust of camping outdoors.
Wide open spaces where windows and the patio slider used to be.
Insects making themselves to home with free access to our air-conditioned indoors.
Setting up, tearing down, cleaning up, dragging out, tunes turned up and achy-breaky everything.
If it could hurt, it did.
My husband was replacing our house windows. While he was making a mess of things from the outside, I was going through drawers, cupboards and closets and making a royal mess on the inside.
It is true that before it gets better it gets worse.
There’s first a whole lot of mess before the blessed outcome of clean and tidy. More often than not it is also the protocol for any number of life issues: repairing relationships, workplaces, homes, or hearts.
Our campcation became – unbeknownst to us before we were in the thick of it – a week of practicing what we preach: problem-solving, patience, and prayer – with more runs to the local home improvement store than you can shake a busted sprinkler head at. We had fun. Let me count the ways:
The first component of our campcation was the awaited Saturday morning wake up to hot, fresh coffee. Instead, we had coffee overflow. The plastic thingy wasn’t snapped down securely. The lid popped up and next thing we knew, we were pouring chewable coffee. It was grounds for frustration. An hour later we had the cleanest coffeemaker in the ‘hood…without the benefit of caffeine. We went out to breakfast, drank a pot of coffee and toasted the start of our campcation!
Next, we picked up our brand new special order windows. Stowed safely in anticipation of Monday’s kickoff of four days of hard labor, we proceeded to enjoy our weekend and ease into Big Project mode. On Monday, Wayne measured the windows (A-ok) and away we went. First window removed after encountering surprises one finds when discovering how builders built back when. First new window unwrapped and set into place – only to find out it was manufactured backwards from our special order.
Did you know a big home project can come to a big screeching halt just like that?
By this time, I was dismantling our master bedroom closet with our bed buried beneath the piles. We lost several hours to dropping back, punting and reconnoitering how not to lose the entire week. Which is not so different from a coach approach. Sometimes we need to stop, drop and roll with the punches.
Our sprinkler system decided to help out by choosing to blow a line, thus happily filling in some of my hubby handyman’s windowless hours. Don’t forget un-renting the scaffolding we rented for the week.
Next day, after being blown off by the local home improvement store salesman, we got the windows manager. Things began looking up as he began looking up things in his computer system. Mister “I Will Make It Right”, making us happy campers once again, proceeded to work his magic with his calloused hands. Only they weren’t calloused; he was born with a genetic skin condition from which he said his mother suffers too. Not only skin, but teeth and bones and spine … so we did what we know to do.
Windowless Wayne asked him if anyone had ever prayed for him; he said no but readily agreed to being prayed for. So we all prayed with our eyes open; to the onlooker it appeared we were simply talking. His tender heart was seen by our tender Lord in the brief three-week window (no pun intended!) that we were doing our window business. The manager took good care of us and we trust the Lord to take good care of him.
When all was said and done, we ended up with a special order re-do of some of the windows and were able to purchase the remaining ones off the floor. Our campcation week was redeemed – after a lot of other prayer too! At 8 pm on Thursday evening and four days of hard labor later, the house was sealed up nicely again with gleaming clean windows and white window frames brightening up our whole house.
In keeping with the way the Lord works things out, we ended up with much better name-brand windows at a deal that we didn’t even know to pray for. “Above all we could ask or think” 🙂
There are still two windows and scaffolding to re-rent when the re-do’s arrive. But even that will nicely coincide with the rest of our campcation…the once-every-twenty-or-so-years yard sale at the end of August. When our house experienced its mini-flood the summer before, we figured it would be a year-long endeavor. Indeed it has been.
We will hopefully complete this 25 years in one house saga just in time for … Labor Day.
I think we’ll just plan to go on a real campcation!
~ Nancy
I’ve had the privilege of working with some clients for a year or longer as we’ve employed some of the principles mentioned in this post. With (drum roll!) the joyous benefit of seeing order, transition steps, celebration of accomplishment and fresh new white space in their life where it was hard to find or define before. If I may be of service to you as a life coach, you are warmly invited to get in touch here.
(Our office has lovely windows too – the better to see your situation by. Chewable coffee not included!)
Photo Credit: Pixabay CC0 Public Domain with PicMonkey enhancements
Jan Torres says
Nanc,
Oh My Goodness!!! What a week and what an opportunity for Father to show His Presence in the midst of it all.
A man on Father’s heart and radar for you to minister His love and mercy to, plus a bonus of a great deal for you
and Wayne in the process! Abba, You are awesome!
Rub your tootsies and all your other aching parts and have a really good, hot cup of coffee! (grounds free) 🙂 Throw in a sweet roll
with that, you deserve it. 🙂
Love you,
Jan
Nancy Bentz says
It was quite the ‘orchestrated’ week! Including the day we had to reorder the special order windows all over again; the name-brand windows just started that very day a 15% off sale – on top of the deal the windows manager gave us for all the trouble. On another note, the windows manager was only assigned to that store for three weeks to ‘fill in’. By the time we get the word the new windows are in (a 3-week wait), he will likely have moved on. Continuing to pray for him that Father who wove him together will bring into perfect alignment the genetic disorder. I’ve asked Abba to ‘flip off the overdrive switch’ and ratchet it back to normal. May never see him again, but trusting his care to the One who gave him life, asking for baby smooth skin and a heart that knows he has been touched and met by the Great Physician. We did have massages on Friday by the way 🙂
Wayne Bentz says
Nanc, my back hurts just reading about it. We did it though and we had great early AM coffee time all week long.
Thanks for being my partner for life!
Wayne
Nancy Bentz says
i can’t think of a better partner for life than you, Mr. Shammah ♥ Thank you for all your hard work, coffee service and lifelong love. And windows, nice new windows!
~ Your Nanc