By the spring of 2021, we had installed new flooring upstairs, fixed leaky toilets, cleaned and painted a shower, covered nearly every wall in Agreeable Grey, white washed the fireplace brick, installed new lighting fixtures in the two upstairs bathrooms, and hung wall decor. Just to name a few. We had done a lot of work.

But work is never done in a circa 1977 farmhouse. There’s always something that needs fixing or sprucing.

The last set of walls still need to be painted, but the walls over the staircase are tall enough that I don’t feel comfortable getting on a ladder to paint it, and because that wall color goes from the living room, up the stairs, and into the landing area outside the upstairs rooms, it remains beige. It’s not bad, but it’s not great. It’s definitely an upgrade from whatever color it must have been in the 70s and 80s, but it’s not my favorite. Yet I choose to accept it because paying a professional isn’t in the budget right now. Someday.

We’d love to have the outside brick painted white. Once we painted the fireplace brick, it changed the whole look and feel of not only the fireplace, but the entire room. It’s now a cozy den, where Hubby and I go to drink coffee in the mornings before our kids wake up on Saturdays. It’s where I like to sit and read or have friends over for an evening of talking. The living room with the TV is where we watch family movies and the kids play, but the den is a sort of haven. It’s my favorite room in the house. So we would love for the outside brick to match the fireplace.

We have these grand ideas of how we’ll decorate at Christmas once the outside of the house isn’t an ugly shade of orange-red. It’s really not my favorite shade of brick, but I guess there are worse colors for a house.

I’d love for my kitchen to be brighter. When we bought it, the walls were painted a dark grey, and with the dark brown cabinets and dark brown backsplash, the kitchen felt like a cave. A splash of Agreeable Grey opened up the space, and I fell in love with the original French doors leading out to the back porch. We do get a good bit of light streaming through, but I’d still love to change the cabinets and backsplash at some point.

I’d love to get new flooring in the downstairs. We have carpet in the dining area, so that’s not ideal. And the floors tend to be a little uneven. That’s what happens after a house has settled. Or so Hubby tells me.

There are lighting fixtures and ceiling fans that could use an update. The house used to have heating through propane tanks, and some of the old heating fixtures are still upstairs. I don’t know whether to keep them because they’re part of the original charm of the house, or if they’re an eyesore that need to be removed. The house now has central heat and air, so the old gas lines and heating unit are certainly not needed. Just old vestiges of days gone by. A reminder of different items.

There are so many things I would change, update, fix, and paint over if money were no object and I had all the time in the world. But sometimes the time and the money have to go to more pressing matters, like fixing the dishwasher, building a buck barn, school tuition and fees, chicken feed, goat supplies, food, and all the other little millions of things that come about and add up when you have a house, a farm, and a family. There are only so many hours in a day, and only so much money available at any given time.

I could spend my time updating my house to make it lavish, worthy of the cover of Magnolia magazine, an HGTV house flip reveal. Manicured, decorated by a professional, a showstopper.

That would be great, actually. I’m sure I would love that. Who wouldn’t? I browse Pinterest; I am not immune to filling pin boards with extravagant things. Elaborate coffee nooks. Expansive kitchen islands. Shiny, new hardwood floors. You’ve seen them. Who wouldn’t want an enviable home like that?

Actually, if I’m being honest, I tend to covet the barns and fencing of the farms around me and online more so than the kitchen spaces I see. The kind of wooden fencing that stretches out across the open fields, with decorative criss-cross support beams and tightly drawn cattle fencing. The kind you see at expensive horse ranches. Towering white barns with cattle stalls, a hay loft, sliding doors, and a herd of fifty goats.

A girl can dream.

We all want to be impressive. We all want that wow factor in our lives. For people to see us and think, “Wow; that girl right there has arrived. She is impressive.” It’s just human. We all want acceptance. Approval. Love.

My home doesn’t always get unconditional love from me. Sometimes I really hate the creaking floors. My husband has come to know exactly what I’m doing when he sees me tiptoeing around a certain spot on the floor, rocking back and forth again and again, listening to the creak. And he knows what’s going through my mind, and he says, “No; that’s not a new creak. That’s always been there. And no; the house is not sinking into the abyss. It’s fine. Houses creak.” But I’m still always listening, wondering, “What’s the noise? Is it a water leak? Is something broken? How much is this going to cost me?”

When something breaks or needs fixing, I really don’t want to spend money for the repair. That money might have been earmarked for something else, like the beautiful pasture fencing, or new kitchen cabinets. I’m only human. I have momentary feelings of woe over repair costs for existing problems, or even potential problems. I’d much rather spend our hard-earned money on dressing up everything so it’s cover-worthy of House Beautiful.

Don’t get me wrong. I love my home. It’s a wonderful home. Good bones. It’s everything we need, and God brought us to it and allowed us to buy it. It’s our quirky, 1970s, fixer-upper, beautiful farmhouse. A safe haven. A blessing. Even though it needs some cosmetic tweaks here and there, I still see its value. And I love it.

And I knew the deed was meant to have my last name from the moment I laid eyes on it.

Every home can use a facelift every now and again. There’s nothing wrong with cosmetic improvements. But if we don’t maintain the structure, it will fall into disrepair and crumble beneath our feet. It doesn’t matter how impressive the wow factor of the front walk is if our foundation is rotting. We have to care for that which we have been entrusted.

Fortunately, this is a metaphor and the house is perfectly sound and not crumbling or sinking into the abyss. There are just things I tend to focus and worry on – probably a little too much.

I think sometimes our homes feel like an extension of ourselves. It’s part of our persona. An image. The Pinterest-worthy fireplace gives us a sense of pride, and we put that in our back pocket as a sort of token of our own personal value.

How we dress is a persona. The way we wear our hair. The job we have. Everyone around this area seems to work on the Arsenal, and if they don’t, it’s a goal. Talk to anyone around here, and if they tell you they work on the Arsenal, it’s a sign of arrival. You have accomplished something by being allowed to drive through the security gate – as though Oz is back there, and everyone wants to see him.

What do people think of me? What does the world see when it looks at me? Who wouldn’t want to look like they have it all together, whether that’s knowing just how to dress for your body type, how you walk and talk, how you conduct yourself in business, or how impressive your home is. We all have a persona.

Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with having a mansion, a six-figure income, fancy clothes, designer handbags, or or the best of everything. But I honestly don’t care about any of that. I like to put my best foot forward and look nice, sure, but I have learned that the nicest people can be dirt poor and live in a trailer, while the exact opposite can be said of someone who lives in a magazine. It’s not about what’s on the outside. I just want to see your heart.

I wonder how often I’ve dressed up the outside of myself in order to hide what was really going on inside. So many times, I’ve hidden behind a smile, an “I’m fine,” an inspirational post, or a really great outfit.

But that’s not how I want to live my life.

I want to be real. The good, the bad, and the ugly. And we can all be good, bad, and ugly. Especially the ugly. We all have hurts, baggage, and trauma. We are human, and we are vulnerable, so we are not immune.

Just like a house can fall into disrepair, so can we.

So, do we live authentically, or do we cover it up? Do we put on a coat of paint to make the façade look like the cover of a magazine, meanwhile the basement is silently filling with water?

I’ve tried that, but it’s an exercise of futility. Eventually, you can’t cover the cracks, and that secret rot is going to start seeping out of the foundation. It will someday spill out onto the pavement for everyone to see. I did it for years.

Trying to be what I thought everyone wanted me to be. Have it all together. Hair in place. Be skinny. Be funny. Be smart. Be capable. But not too skinny. Not too funny. Not too smart. Just a little incapable. Where’s the line between acceptable mess and trainwreck? And who gets to decide? Who gets to decide what is worthy and lovable?

I spent so many years, so much of my time, trying to please an earthly father who didn’t love me anyway. I tried to be all the things he expected, but no matter what I did or accomplished, it was never going to be enough.

There’s a reason Elsa from the movie Frozen so deeply resonated with me. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but the tears that spilled from my eyes during Let it Go were sent from a place of deep hurt I couldn’t reach with my mind. My head couldn’t touch it, but my heart did. Somewhere in my psyche, I knew. And the tears came. I didn’t understand it at the time. I brushed it away. “Why am I crying? How silly.”

Meanwhile, God was watching me, waiting for me to stop playing games, to look up, and admit where I was at. Except I didn’t even know where I was until I became utterly broken over all the tragedy that had transpired around me and to me. The broken-and-aware-of-it version of me allowed me to see things a bit more clearly. The scales had fallen from my eyes, and I knew I couldn’t pretend anymore.

We are all broken, and we all have pasts we’d rather forget. We all have trauma.

The year 2020, alone, taught us that, I think. Marriages that had been on the brink for years finally crumbled under the weight of quarantine. Social isolation brought people to their knees with depression. Civil unrest, the supply chain, the political climate, and conspiracy theories gave people anxiety in ways I didn’t think possible. We are a broken, hurting people.

So what do we do? In the midst of trauma, hurt, pain, brokenness. What do we do? Where do we go? In whom do we find hope?

Do we cover the cracks with putty, slap on a fresh coat of paint, and hope the water doesn’t rise anymore?

Maybe.

But I don’t think that’s going to work forever.

No. Sometimes the floors have to be ripped up. Foundations have to be jacked up, new concrete has to be poured. French drains must be installed. We can’t keep putting up spackle and hope no one will see the interior damage, even if it does look great on the outside.

Sometimes the hard work just has to be done. The time must be put in. The money has to be spent. The jar of change has to be smashed, and instead of going to Paradise Falls, we have to get dirty with some repairs.

We just have to be willing to reach into the hard places in our souls. Flip back to the beginning of the story and pour over it all again.

Every page of my past has already been written. I can’t undo it. I can’t change it.

I could run from it. I could dress it up. Frame it differently. Dress it up with a bow. I could pretend it doesn’t exist. Deny. Deny. Deny. But it doesn’t change it.

The brokenness of my past cannot be erased.

But I also know that the brokenness of my past is not the end of my story.

It’s backstory. It’s the reason for my mission today. It’s why I’m doing what I’m doing today.

If I didn’t have my past, I wouldn’t be where I’m standing today. And if I hadn’t done hard work to work through abuse, trauma, and tragedy, I wouldn’t be who I am today.

And ultimately, it’s only Jesus Who could have healed me from all of that mess. It’s because I went through those valleys and because He healed me that I have empathy for those walking the same valleys. And that I can come alongside those hurting in the same ways I have been hurt.

I am not what my biological father told me I was. He said I was unacceptable baggage to him. Unwanted. Thrown away. Ugly. Unlovable.

I am none of those things.

I am what my Heavenly Father says I am. Accepted. Wanted. Held. Cherished. Beautiful. Loved.

Every person should get to feel that. It’s a tragedy when our earthly fathers don’t love us. When they turn us away. When they cast us out. When they say we are unlovable. Unworthy. When they walk away. But that says more about them that it could ever say about you. About me.

I can only imagine what kind of trauma and pain an abuser must have in their past. What sort of brokenness my earthly father must carry with him daily. The knowledge of that breaks my heart. That doesn’t excuse him for what he did, but I have come to a place of forgiveness. That’s not really for him; that’s for me. My forgiveness of his abuse set me free. That’s all I want for him, and for others.

I would give anything and everything to let even one person know they’re wanted. Accepted. Loved. If it’s ever in my power to show someone else that kind of love – because God showed it to me first – then I will do it.

I’m willing to be used however God sees fit to use me. To move heaven and earth if I can. To accept the unacceptable. To want the unwanted. To love the unlovable.

That’s what Jesus did. He went to the broken, the sick, the outcast. He talked to the people in society that no one wanted. To the lowly. To the shamed. The widow. The orphan.

I was broken. I was unwanted. I was the outcast. I was an orphan. And He came after me. How could I not do the same?

Whatever You want, God. Have Your way.