Saw dust

My mother would sometimes say jokingly "der schoenster sport ... ist der moebeltransport"

German which can be loosely translated as "The best game is.... shifting furniture."

We love to do this in our home - and every few weeks a cupboard is shifted here - a bed is moved there.

A month ago we embarked on a journey. In our home. We engaged a carpenter and asked him how long it would take to make some wall cupboards - and how much.

He named a sum. We gulped and agreed. He named a time - 2 weeks. We gulped and agreed.

Then the process started.

Bharat - our carpenter from the state of Jharkhand - became part of our lives. Sawdust invaded every corner of the house. The marvels of plywood and the application of skill and time meant that we now have 2 beautiful cupboards.

The whole process cost more than we thought (a bit). It also took longer than we thought (a lot). Twice as long - which was painful since I ended up working largely from home to be 'on site' as the carpenter did his job.

Today it was finally over. After living as refugees - shifting between rooms - having our worldly possessions packed up in boxes and bags and getting dusty in every nook and cranny - we finally said good bye to Bharat. We did so after putting the crisp notes that he had earned in his pocket and spending some time talking about eternity and God's wonderful gift of Jesus.

With Bharat out the door - then began the scrubbing and shifting and sweeping and shifting and sweeping and moving and changing and thinking and moving and more sweeping.

Where did so much stuff come from? Why is so much of it so shabby - and why do we hold on to things so dearly?

And in the midst of all of this the sawdust keeps showing up. You sweep and there seems to be another layer somewhere. You dust - and soon another film appears. And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past...

To be fair - we have been sweeping steadily over the last month of home-site construction. But today allowed us to finally go into all the corners and 'spring-clean'. I expect the next few days will still see some truant dust showing up every now and then - but the home looks already a different place.

Life is like that. If we knew what it would take before we got into it... very little of life would be done at all. Marriage is certainly that way. But how blessed it is to persevere - to push through and keep praying and working with each other.

The blessedness of the commonplace - the felt and experienced together continues. At supper - while we were all still dirty with half the house in a mess - we ate our hot chappatis and egg-potato bhujia and washed it down with a celebratory pepsi for the heroic work all the Eichers have been doing. There is a special joy in putting things right - in cleaning up - in making the everyday beauty of a clean home. We could feel that joy of doing as we clasped slightly weary hands while we said grace. We feel it in the blessed sleep that comes after hard work. And which sometimes does not - which is why I am up writing this at an unearthly hour while all else slumbers.

And so we say goodnight - late at night - or actually well into Friday morning. The kids are sleeping in their new-look room - Sheba and I have our old (creaky) bed back for our use after a few years of the kids using it. The sawdust will probably still keep showing up for a few days.