Future Ruins

I’m in a building season.  Literally and figuratively. 

I’m building a new me.  I’m restructuring and redesigning places in my heart.  Letting light into dark spaces.  Splashing new color where before it was drab.  Serving up new tastes and projects to stimulate the senses.

I’m not alone in it:  My husband is my biggest champion, and constantly reinforces the me who sits at the teahouse in quiet and rest.  The me who is inefficient with her time and heads to the beach.  The me who fails more because she tries more.

I’m building a new ministry.  Shaping values and goals.  Seeking the core truths of God’s heart.   Putting together words to try and express His vision for His Bride, and how she is to care for orphans.

I’m not alone in it:  I get to build this ministry with an amazing team.  Volunteers, pastors, social workers, and regular old Joe’s like me who are willing to roll up their sleeves and take some hard knocks.

I’m building a new house.  Not from the ground up, but from the inside out.  A bank-owned home just became our first home, and it needs new paint, new bathrooms, and most exciting/daunting of all, a new kitchen.  It needs life and light and love to be poured into it again. 

And I’m not alone in it:  We have amazing friends and family, ready to get dirty and knock out walls.  Ready to analyze paint swatches and window treatments for hours.  Ready to pray through every room in the house.  Ready to enjoy the soon-to-be-BBQ area as a reward for their labor of love.

I’m in a building season.  And I can’t help but be ware that what I build today will someday be a story-once-told.  The projects of today are the ruins of later years.   Rather than deterring me, this is invigorating.  I love walking the ruins of Rome, the archaeological finds of Israel, and the restored relics of Istanbul. 

And while I don’t expect to ever build something worthy of a guidebook, I do want to build with future ruins in view. 

When I design a kitchen, I want to build more than cabinets.  I want to create a space where hearts are opened up in between bites of chips and guac (which should be plentiful thanks to the Avodaco tree! Can I get an Amen!?).

When I step away from building an Orphan Care ministry, I want to have more than a folder of events and procedures to leave behind. 

When the new-me is no longer on this old-earth, I hope there’s a whole lot more than dust in my wake.

I want to build future ruins, because when you walk through ruins, you see the strong stuff, the enduring stuff, the stuff that held all the temporary stuff together.  

When we’re in building seasons, we actually get to have some say in what will be discovered about us.  What mark we get to leave.  I pray that my future ruins tell a story of relationships over tasks.  Of a healthy marriage.  Of generous living.  Of core truths over meaningless compromise.  Of exploring.  Of redemption. 

What about you?  What story do you want your future ruins to tell?