Wednesday’s Word

Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power...

Distressed or De-Stressed!

Welcome to Wednesday’s Word & Coffee Hour @ Chicklit Power and Trench Classes United. Grab your Strand of Faith; it’s my prayer that you will find many knots to tie in yours today.

A few weeks ago, I began a sort of renewing, refurbishing project. I wanted to distress my bathroom door, make it look vintage-like. I wanted to change its appearance. When it comes to this sort of thing, I’m not one that likes to do a whole lot of research first; nor do I like to do any of the prep work. I like to just jump in and begin. Thank goodness for my husband who doesn’t mind doing the stuff I don’t like doing. :-)

It was a four-step process, which included wiping down the door to make sure there was no residue of any kind, paint with a primer-based paint, then sand to distress it and then glaze and wipe. Whoa-la! I loved it; and what’s even better, I absolutely enjoyed doing it. 

As the project was coming to a completion I realized I wanted to do more, so I began to plan to refurbish, renew and refresh our laundry room, mainly by distressing the door and the cabinets. The problem is the cabinets are laminate, a totally different type of finish which required a different process. How hard could it be, right?

This time, I did a bit of research before beginning and so began the process to refurbish, refresh and renew our laminate cabinets. Oh my goodness, I had no idea! I can’t even remember how many times we painted on the primer, sanded, put on the color, sanded…only to see it wasn’t the look we were going for. I was in a quandary, and the fun and excitement were slipping away. In its place was a bit of frustration.  We made several trips to Home Depot and Lowes, and the hardware store down the street, purchased several types of brushes thinking this would do the trick.

We kept doing and undoing, until finally we reached out and received help from a friend who shared his secret to adding texture to the laminate cabinets and then came the final step, glazing, which also turned out to be full of learning and re-doing!

I thought about how I am much like those laminate cabinets, and maybe you are too. We may have a smooth finish on the outside, but when trials and tragedies hit, what is inside of us will eventually come out and distress us and what distresses us interferes with our ability to live a faith-filled life and requires a bit of work, like our laminate cabinets. Jesus wants to de-stress what distresses us!

Jesus needs to take that sander, maybe even a scraping tool, peel back the layers, reveal the issues, the blockages that interfere with His original design for us and in us and then seal it back up with His amazing grace and healing love…thereafter imprinting a new design, a design which includes a coat of love and joy, peace and patience, and then a coat of kindness, goodness and gentleness and finally, the glaze of self-control.

He will stop at nothing to infuse us with these gifts. His ways are not our ways and His love is relentless, and though the process hurts a lot of the time, the finished product, aka, that part of our life, beholds His artwork, glazed with the beauty of His grace.

In His artistic grip

Evinda