I’ve heard it said that anything worth having is uphill.
For me, I feel like this is true in almost every area in my life and particularly in the building of this house, this dream. It’s been quite overwhelming at times, okay most of the time. I’ve had to give up expectations on timing, costs and what is actually possible for us to accomplish in the weekends we spend on our property.
We headed out early Friday morning to get in a full two and a half days of work. The house is mostly wrapped in moister barrier. This meant Jer and I could start siding. As always, I had my ideas about what we could accomplish but after two hours of just setting up, I realized I had set myself up for disappointment again.
This is supposed to be a joyous thing for us to do and we have all the supplies for this part of the build! Yet, here I am feeling negative. Jer worked so hard and I tried my best to help. We’d measure the sliding panels, and Jer made the cuts. I’d set the spacer in so it would all be even. Of course, I didn’t expect to complete the whole house in one weekend. We’d actually done a little of front the week before. But I’m someone who likes to set goals and meet them!
You know what, there’s a lot of things out of my control, like almost everything. It had been a hard week at work as well, this feeling out of control over important things that are my responsibility. People are expecting me to make it all work and sometimes, I just can’t.
Okay, so this all lead up to a minor meltdown a little more than halfway through Saturday. We were working on our longest, tallest wall. Not only were we not going to finish, we weren’t even going to make it halfway up the wall. I put myself in time-out for about fifteen minutes as I could feel my emotions rolling, and not just because of this side of the wall.
I found a sunny spot… on the tractor with my feet dangling over the steering wheel and just sat quietly and appreciating the beauty of the trees, the forest, how it smelled, the birds… I needed to regroup and remind myself of how far we had come from just a year ago when we purchased this raw land.
Will we get the home closed in before winter? I sure hope so, but we can only do what we can do. I’m grateful for what we have. I can’t say I’m always happy about the uphill climb but I know it’s good for me and Jer and our relationship. Thank God, he’s a patient man!