Beneath the Floors

“These words I speak to you are not incidental additions to your life, homeowner improvements to your standard of living. They are foundational words, words to build a life on. If you work these words into your life, you are like a smart carpenter who built his house on solid rock” Matthew 7:24-25. (The Message)

Years ago, we discovered that our crawl space which ran under our 30-year-old home was completely infiltrated with mold. It had attached to the duct work, the HVAC units, and everything that related to it. We needed a professional company to come in and remove the mold by pulling everything out, throwing it away, encapsulating, and wrapping the block foundational walls with a moisture resistant covering. They installed new duct work and all of its connecting equipment. It was one of the most expensive projects our home ever required and did nothing for the beautification of our home above the crawl space. A few years later, mold was found in an exterior wall to the right of our front porch. As they opened up the wall to fix it, they discovered that there was rot in the floor and structure under our hardwood floors. We had to pull up the entire hardwood area and replace the 3 rooms of flooring. Our floors are beautiful now, but only because so much work beneath the floors had to happen.

Lysa TerKeurst, author of Seeing Beautiful Again wrote, ‘Home renovations are so very similar to heart renovations…You have to tear some things down before you can build back up in new and beautiful ways…You have to work through what was so we can move on to what can be’ p. 82. There is nothing glamorous about working on mold, nor is it ever appealing to work on foundational things. But, the necessity of spiritual heart work will always radiate outward onto surface beauty.

I love my floors in all their beauty, strength, and shine but we only have them because there was something broken and rotten beneath them. It was only by watching the day to day tearing out the old and replacing with the new did we see the hope that was building. We must trust the process when God is revealing the parts of our lives that need reworking. Don’t neglect the work…Trust the process…Look for the beauty.

‘Track the progress you do see. Be patient with the setbacks. Celebrate the wins, even the small ones. Stacks of the small wins turn into big wins. And eventually you’ll be so glad you pressed through the renovation when you see the beauty that comes from all the hard work’ p. 85