My life as a house?

The ladies in my study group tend to talk about our lives as houses, with issues/areas/seasons of our life as rooms in the house, and God as the builder/architect. We end up stating things like: ‘God has been taking out the trash’ or ‘He’s been doing a little remodeling’.

I have always really liked the symbology. . .
– It helps me to realize that some things DO take time (especially if you want it done right). God may be patient, but I’m not very. Sometimes I get frustrated by how long things take to work through. I feel like I’m in a never ending spiral and just go over the same things again and again. It could just be me since I tend to be a little set in my ways and it takes awhile to break a new thought into the old habits.

– Its nice to think/hope that He isn’t going to just knock down the whole house and start over. Maybe this is necessary when you don’t have the right foundation, but it seems to be that for those of us that started out on the right track he’ll take the project in smaller chunks so we don’t freak out. Or maybe he’ll just do a room at a time.

– I also believe that one of our coping strategies when things come along that we don’t like (anything from a trauma or a death to something small like a hurtful word) is to compartmentalize. We take the thing we don’t like and hide it away somewhere, ie close the door of that room in our house. Sometimes we do this because we just don’t have time, but sometimes we do it because we aren’t willing or able to deal with it at the time it occurred.

– This symbology seems to help us help other people work through things. We can ask them symbolically if they have any closed rooms in their house and amazingly, many times it turns out to be a way for them to get past the ‘denial’ stage (the point where we don’t acknowledge the event occurred, See post about grief) to a place where we can start to talk and work through some of the emotions. I’m always surprised about how easily we fool ourselves into ‘forgetting’ or ‘ignoring’ things. This could just be me too, but I’ve seen others do it.

Well, I always really liked the symbology when God was just doing a little sprucing up in MY house. A little bit of vacuuming and dishes, surface stuff. Maybe a little bit of airing out some rooms that I had closed up, semi-surface stuff. But apparently, these days He has some remodeling in the works. Maybe its time to upsize, to move from a little apartment to a 3 bedroom, to grow a little. I don’t know the plans yet and maybe I don’t get to. But he’s been nudging me. Giving me some hints, asking me what I think about some things. . . And like the good traditional Christian I was raised to be, I’m really not liking the change. 😉