When we bought our 1970s farmhouse, we knew it needed some love. It had ugly shag carpet, faded linoleum, and mismatched everything. We knew it was a fixer-upper. We didn’t necessarily know how much of a project we were about to wrestle, but we knew the house had mostly good bones. Our realtor was correct in his assessment on the level of quirk with which this house was built.

Two of the bedrooms had carpet so red, they could have been a scene from one of Dexter’s crimes. One bedroom had a faded-for-40-years shade of navy blue, and the last bedroom’s carpet was an amalgamation of nursery color confetti, with nursery-type stains to match. The kids’ bathroom had undergone some light renovations by way of a DIY project, but its flooring didn’t match the new LVP we had purchased, so it had to go. The master bathroom had yellow-tinged zebra print linoleum. Running the upstairs hallway connecting all these rooms was a cream shade of “normal” carpet, which the previous owners must have installed some time after the shag installation. It was all going to go.

We had our install days set on the calendar, the upstairs was empty, and we were ready to camp out on our mattresses downstairs.

The workers came to rip up all the carpet on day one, and I was thrilled. Everything looked good to me. But then Hubby went upstairs to inspect the subfloor, and he found a spot in one of the bedrooms that concerned him. Under a window, the subfloor had taken on some water damage some time ago, before we owned the house, and we realized that it had some rot we couldn’t see until after the carpet had been removed. Now what?

The new flooring install began, regardless, in a corner bedroom, which gave us some time to rectify the subfloor rot.

Before Hubby cut out the rotten section of subfloor, I was afraid the rot had penetrated the support beams and structural integrity of the entire house. We were sinking into the abyss, and we had bought a lemon. Tears. So many tears. This was during a time in my life when I was repressing a lot of emotional turmoil and grief (not that I knew that at the time), so something as simply as subfloor rot was enough to send me over the edge into immediate Chicken Little panic.

The sky was falling.

Rather, the house was falling. Except it wasn’t – not that my husband could tell me that. All my hopes and dreams were dashed. The house was broken, the entire foundation was suddenly sitting on a swamp, and everything good that God had brought into our life was a lie, and it must have all been some sort of trick.

This is the part of the story where I remind you that my husband is a saint. Patience is a virtue, right? My husband has that one on lock.

After my initial (and continued) panic, we found that the damage was contained to just the area under the window, and the support beams underneath were intact and uncompromised. However, in order to discover this, Hubby had to cut a little more subfloor out than would have been ideal, and to be honest, we’d never really done this sort of work before. Master craftsmen, we are not. But at least we knew what we were dealing with, and we had at least a rough idea of how to fix it.

It was simple enough: measure the depth, length, and width of subflooring material, and then buy new subfloor to fit the hole we cut. Simple, right?

Not so simple.

The house was built in 1977, and the plans were drawn up in Boston. The blueprints had originally been drawn for a Dutch Colonial style, but when the couple moved from Boston to Alabama, they changed the style to Southern Colonial. There are some interesting code features in this 1977 Boston-born Southern Colonial farmhouse, one being that at the time (and maybe this is still true; I don’t know. I’ve never been to Boston), all bathroom light switches had to be outside the bathroom. When the plans were changed, the bathroom light switches were also changed to go inside the bathrooms, with the exception of the one outside the master bathroom that was somehow overlooked. This really had nothing to do with the story here; I’m just trying to drive home the point that the house is weird.

The realtor warned us.

So, all that to say, there are some interesting design features and code specs in this house – things I’ve never seen; things Hubby has never even heard of, and he used to work construction on his dad’s rental properties when he was in high school and college.

One of the design features we ran into with this subfloor problem was what appeared to be extra insulation in the walls. Except it wasn’t the type of insulation I’d ever expect to see in this location. Inside the walls was what looked like more flooring material. I’m not sure if it was particular board, or plywood, or what, but it was a type of wooden sheeting. In the wall. Interesting.

To say the least.

Hubby went to the home improvement store to buy new subflooring, and I stayed home with the kids and the workers. We had to get this flooring in soon so the flooring installation workers could do their job. We were quickly approaching a deadline to where if we didn’t get the flooring fixed so they could install more LVP, we were going to be stuck. All of this flooring locks together, so it’s not like an entire bedroom could be skipped and then come back to. The bedroom with the gaping hole had to be fixed.

Hubby returned with what he believed would be the correct subfloor. But before we could put it in and nail it all down, we had to remove some of the wood from the wall. Apparently, over time, the wood in the wall had shifted, from the house settling, most likely, but we really didn’t know for sure. Either way, the wood in the wall was now sitting in the way of, and covering, the support beam that the new subfloor piece needed to sit on.

The only way to remove it was to quite literally cut it out of the wall. And because we weren’t trying to tear walls down to do this, we had maybe an inch’s worth of space and not much visibility. It was like using a reciprocating saw blindfolded.

That’s exactly what it was like.

This took hours. Mostly because a reciprocating saw is unwieldy, and because Hubby didn’t want to damage the newly painted walls during this endeavor, thus adding to our project, and because he’s admittedly not experienced with this type of tool (because he hates this type of tool), and because we were past the point of exhaustion.

The workers had already gone home at this point in the night, with an expected arrival time of 8:00 the next morning. We had to get this done. Hours later, Hubby had finally cut away enough wood material from behind the wall that we were able to install the new piece of subfloor.

We measured the length and width, cut the piece to fit, and put it in place. We were done! Ta da!

Except we weren’t. The new piece of subfloor was too thick. Turns out, the original subfloor in our 1977 farmhouse was irregular. Meaning, they don’t make it like that anymore. Or the original owners did something irregular. Or we measured wrong. Or we measured correctly but the home improvement store had mislabeled something. At this point, it didn’t matter, because it was the middle of the night. The stores were closed. There was no fixing this. We’d have to postpone the flooring install, leave a hole in the floor, and figure something out later. Only, exhaustion past the point of rationale, years of backburnered grief simmering inside of me, and just plain old frustration were getting the better of me.

I burst.

“Why!? Why, God!? Why can’t we just do one project? Why does the subfloor have to be irregular? Why is this so hard? What are you doing up there? Are you even seeing what we’re dealing with down here?”

I’m really fortunate that God is long-suffering and loving, because I’m pretty sure I’d have been smote a long time ago, with this sort of attitude, if He weren’t. Sometimes I can be a real spiritual brat. New morning mercies? Yeah, those are for me.

My husband, ever the optimist, or maybe God gave him the idea, or both, suggested we try looking in the workshop.

“Seriously!? What are we ever going to find in there that’s going to help us with the subfloor? It’s not like there’s just going to be exactly what we need forty years after the house was built. This is insane.” I was ready to succumb to the darkness. It was over. Maybe I could turn the hole into an intercom system to the living room or something. Just stick your head in the hole and yell at whoever was on the first floor below.

Hubby convinced me to at least try, because the worst case scenario was that we’d have to reschedule the flooring workers while we finished fixing the subfloor. This sounds very logical and reasonable now, looking back on it a year after the fact, but at the time, that seemed an insurmountable feat.

Nevertheless, off to the workshop we went.

Even though I didn’t really believe that we’d find anything to help us, I still prayed. Sarcastically. Doubtfully. Unfaithfully.

In the middle of that situation, with what seemed a hole the size and depth of the Mariana Trench in my child’s bedroom floor, I felt unseen, insignificant, and forgotten by the God of the universe. Couldn’t He have caused this whole flooring install to go smoothly? Couldn’t He have paved the road with comfort and predictability? I knew in my heart that He could, so the fear that He was withholding from me was more than my tired soul could bear. What was so inherently wrong with me that He would choose to allow this in my life? All I wanted was to give my family good things – in this case, new flooring – so why was God throwing a monkey wrench in all my plans?

If the woman I am today could meet with the me from a year ago, I’d be able to tell her these things aren’t always what they seem. They’re not always what they feel. From God’s unlimited vantage point, this set of particular circumstances was anything but hopeless.

Yet in this moment, in the raw, unfiltered angst of my limited perspective, God seemed like – honestly – the worst. An enemy.

It’s ugly, but it’s real. It’s okay; God can take my ugly. He’s seen far worse. That’s not to make light of my attitude, because it sucked; that is to say that God is bigger than my raw, ugly moments. He knew me when He formed the foundations of the Earth. He knew me in my mother’s womb. He knew. He knew we’d be in this place in our relationship at this exact moment. And He still chose me.

The grace of God overwhelms me. To know how broken I was in this place and to look back and see just how much He was wooing me, drawing me in, showing me the vastness of His outstretched arms…

To realize that I could think of Him as anything but benevolent, anything but kind, anything but loving… I am undone.

As I stood in our workshop at 3 am, searching for a piece of wood to fill the gaping hole in our floor, I understand now that it was no greater, or less, than the gaping hole I was longing to fill within my own heart.

Oh, if only I were more faithful in times like these, so I didn’t have to admit my shortcomings and failings in this forum. If only I were the sort of woman who could just stand still in faithful belief that her God could and would meet all her needs, in His perfect timing.

No; that woman was farther up the road from where I stood on that cold, January night. I had miles to go before I could sleep.

The end of this flooring story is that, miraculously, we found a piece of flooring. There must have been leftover wood from the original build that the previous owner had saved and had turned into shelving for his workshop. The irregular depth of subfloor we needed was covered in tools, screws and nails, and all sorts of junk, literally the shelf itself, in our own workshop.

The question remained, though, would it be the correct length and width? I think you can probably guess the answer to that question.

Not only was that piece of wood enough to cover the hole in the floor, but it was the exact set of dimensions. It required no cutting. No trimming. It was exactly what we needed. No more, and no less. It was perfect.

As we finished replacing the flooring, Hubby and I both marveled at the work of God’s hands. I wish I could say that one experience transformed my entire outlook and that I trusted God implicitly moving forward. If only. Like I said before, I had miles to go. I still have miles to go. Don’t we all?

It could have been an easy project. It could have gone flawlessly, with no rotten subfloor, no middle-of-the-night miracles, no spiritually bankrupt tantrums from a woman far too old to throw them. But without all of that, how would I have learned that God is faithful, that He sees me, that I am significant, that I am not forgotten, and in fact thought of and loved beyond measure? More than the grains of sand along the seashore.

Faith isn’t a one-and-done kind of box to check. I mean, the transformation from lost to found in Jesus is done in an instant. That part is quick, but it’s the only part that is, in my opinion. The rest of the faith-journey takes a lifetime. I’m not anywhere close to done. But I press on toward to goal to win the prize. Jesus calls, and I keep following, even if I’m throwing a tantrum while I run.

He can handle it. He’s God. We’ve got miles to go together before I sleep.