Life Renovations

We’re thinking about renovating our kitchen. Any suggestions or helpful hints are welcome. 

To be honest, we’ve been thinking about renovating our kitchen since we bought the house seventeen years ago. To the point where the spot where my dad spilled some glue on our linoleum floor when trying to repair the countertop the first year we moved in is still there—we just always figured it would get cleaned up when we renovated the kitchen. And we have three different colors of main appliances—the stove and microwave are bisque since they matched the refrigerator that was there when we moved in, the dishwasher is black since appliances no longer came in bisque when we bought the dishwasher, and the refrigerator is now stainless steel since when our refrigerator needed to be replaced we figured we’d move toward stainless steel for all of them when we finally did the renovation at some point in the hopefully not-too-distant future. Oh—and there’s a large section of linoleum that’s been missing in our dining room for the past two years since our dog Luna chewed it up when she was a puppy. At the time, we figured we’d wait until the renovation (that was supposed to be right around the corner…) to fix it when we put in new flooring.

We have friends who redid their kitchen a few years ago, and when we ask them what they like about it or what advice they have for us, the thing they keep saying is, “We love it. Don’t know why we didn’t do it long ago.” And to be honest, as we begin envisioning what our kitchen might one day be, the thought that keeps coming back to me is—we should have done this a long time ago.

Seventeen years ago, we could have had matching appliances. Seventeen years ago, we could have had drawers with gliders on them so we’re not constantly working on controlling our tongue when they inevitably bind up and get jammed. Seventeen years ago we could have had walls that aren’t all marked up from the previous owner’s chairs scraping against the wall. We should have done this long ago.

There’s a lot in the Christian life that we should have done long ago. If Jesus Christ is your Lord, Paul admonishes the church in his letter to the Colossians, live your lives in him. Be rooted and built up in him. Strengthened in the faith you were taught and overflowing with thankfulness (2:6-7). He encourages us to put to death anything that belongs to our earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires and greed (3:5). And he goes on and adds anger and rage and malice and slander and filthy language. Do not lie to each other, he says—this is all part of your old self.

And then he says something remarkable: you are a new self. You are a new person in Christ. You’re being renewed. You’re being renovated—in the knowledge and image of your Creator (3:10). And as part of this renovation, as part of this renewal, clothe yourself with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive one another. And over all these virtues put on love, and let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts (3:12-15).

I like to think I’m fairly far along in this renovation process. I’m a pastor, after all. But if I’m truly honest with myself, I have a lot of work yet to do. There are a lot of corners of my life that aren’t what they should be. Mostly little things that I’ve never bothered to address. That I’ve ignored or said to myself, “I’ll deal with that later.” Or “That’s not really such a big deal.” But then I think about what my life might look like if I cleaned all that up—if I truly clothed myself with compassion and kindness and humility and gentleness and patience. If I was better able to bear with others and forgive easily. If I put love over all things, and if I let the peace of Christ rule in my heart—and I think to myself: I should have done this long ago.

The truth is…unless we’re intentional, unless we make it a priority, it’s surprisingly easy to wake up seventeen years later and realize we haven’t made much progress in this renovation project. 

The good news, thankfully, is that we’re not ultimately responsible for producing this change. God is at work in us. Paul tells us we are being renewed. But renovations go a whole lot smoother and a whole lot faster when they have willing participants. And workers that don’t keep putting off the work that needs to be done.

I’m grateful that I’m farther along in the renovation of my life than Elizabeth and I are in the renovation of our kitchen. And yet this current election cycle has reminded me of how far I have yet to go until that renovation is complete. I look at all with which Paul tells us to clothe ourselves—compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, patience, forbearance, forgiveness, love, and peace—and I set them beside all I’ve felt and experienced in the last eight months, what I’ve thought and felt about some people, and I almost begin to cry. There seems to be a lot more “old self” than “new self.” And the one that’s really getting me right now is that, especially the last few days, that peace of Christ, for which my soul longs, has been terribly elusive. 

Paul helps me see what my life might be if I clothed myself fully with Christ. I long for the day when all those things are just who I am, all the time. For the day when it is almost always “new self” rather than far too often “old self.” I wish I had started on it long ago.