Demolition: Under Construction, Part One

[Note: I wrote this entry over a year ago (August 2010), but didn’t feel right about posting it then. I do now. How strange to peruse my drafts folder recently and realize that I’d received a word picture for a future time frame! Have more to say, but that will be another post.]

[Image from seamanconstruction.com]

Several weeks ago [as I said, August 2010], I woke up early on a Monday morning to the sound of a giant piece of machinery pounding our driveway into bits, while a Bobcat zipped around leveraging chunks out and lifting them into waiting dump truck. By the end of the day, the assault was over, and no pavement remained. (Things like this can happen to your driveway when you share it with all the other townhome residents and the association decides what happens to it and when.) 

As many things do, it got me thinking. I've felt a little like I've been under construction this summer.  A brush with ill health and physical limitations, along with a shift from many of my typical activities, have left my identity on the ground, cracked and fragile. I'm pondering who I am underneath, what's left beneath the things I do.

Being sick -even though it only lasted a few weeks- revealed how flimsy my grasp on health and independence is, and it scared me. Life changes quickly, easily, and we don't usually see those demolitions or detours coming. Instead, you wake up one morning and something you have no control over is tearing up the pavement. The things that defined you, gave you purpose, secured your position in the world -- those same things are being mercilessly hauled away. And you wonder what to do with what's left.

I've recently watched several people in my life face this kind of major upheaval, due to health problems, loss of a job, consequences of choices, or fallout from the choices of others.  Few, if any, have the luxury of seeing where they're headed; all they know is that life is different. Entirely different.    

In front of my house, the purpose behind the upheaval was revealed soon enough. Over the rest of the week, other workers (and vehicles) arrived to level the dirt, pour new concrete, and eventually spread and smooth new asphalt.  [The freshly minted driveways make me want to dig out my rollerblades and go for a spin. If a driveway can be drop-dead gorgeous, mine is.]

It's at this point that this comparison falls apart, because life construction happens at a MUCH slower pace.  We see the piles of rubble, but we cannot envision what will replace them. 

  

Seems that God knows we won’t usually sign ourselves up for construction.

I don't know God's timetable, but I do know that the big-picture blueprint states that He is working to transform me into His likeness (2 Cor. 4), and that He who began a good work in me will be faithful to complete it until the day of Jesus Christ (Philippians 1).