Show Pieces

We debunked the bunk bed and put the single bed in the Master bedroom against the wall. We didn't want to get rid of it for a variety of reasons- one of which is we didn't want Asherel to have to sleep on the floor when both boys come home to visit,as they will at Christmas.
Arvo threatened to get all gooey and sentimental on me as he disassembled the bunk bed support he had built years ago.
"Many small feet went up and down this ladder," he said, misty eyed.

I don't need anyone in my immediate world starting to reminisce about the good old days when the children were little. My carefully crafted sheen of self control will be ripped away and I will become a bubbling mass of unconstrained grief. I loved those little kids underfoot. So I told him to go get all weepy elsewhere, while throwing the bunk scraps outside. Harsh yes, but life is cruel. (PS- Remember, exaggeration is a key literary device so don't start sending me emails about how insensitive I am.)

I am not much of a home decorator, but even my unskilled eye could see that the twin bed against the wall of the master bedroom left much to be desired in terms of beauty and design.
"What would you think of me making that pretty...like a day bed with pillows and a nice cover?" I asked Arvo, who had recovered by now, with the bunk ladder out of sight in the garbage pile.
"That's fine," he said.
"I'll do it as cheaply as possible," I said.
And off I went to outlet linen stores. I prowled the aisle of one for many minutes before a saleswoman decided I was either homeless, and just warming myself in the store, or needed assistance.
"May I help you?"
"Yes! I hope you can anyway. I have an ugly bed in a master bedroom- an extra twin bed that we need to keep there. So I want to beautify it."
"You mean like a day bed look?"
I almost kissed her.
"Yes! Is that weird?"
"Oh no, that is quite common."
"Really!?" I don't think I have ever stumbled on appropriate, common decorating schemes before.
"What color scheme?"
"Greens...and most importantly, cheap."
"Cheap is not a color, ma'am."
Neither is bankruptcy."
"OK, I understand. Well, the cheapest option would be two king pillows with shams and a couple of decorative throw pillows."
We scoured the store together. They had only one king pillow and it was not as cheap as I had hoped.
"Pssst," she whispered, "Go next door. They are on sale and they have lots of shams and covers to choose from. Best of all, their favorite color is cheap."
I tiptoed away after giving her a big wink and high five.

When I set all the pillows and decorative cover over the bed, it looked stunning. It is currently my favorite part of my house. As soon as I smoothed the cover and settled the pillows at just the right angle, the dogs leaped up on the bed and stretched out.
"Hey!" I said, "This is not for sleeping on! This is art!"
Arvo shook his head, "Do you want to just put a plastic bag over it?"
"No, but I don't want to have to clean dog hairs off it!"
He left, looking a little disgusted, and Honeybun looked anxiously at me.


Even I have to laugh at myself sometimes. Decorating a bed that I don't want anyone to sleep on. There are homes with such exquisite furniture and decor and pristine carpets that I am nervous entering them. I am just not comfortable in those types of dwellings. They are beautiful, and I love beauty. But those homes have lost sight, in my opinion, of the primary purpose of a home. A home should be a welcoming, unpretentious place where you can be who you are, surrounded by those who accept you anyway.

It is not supposed to be a showpiece, I reminded myself. It is first and foremost a bed. And strange as this is to non-animal people, the dogs are family, thus have rights to the bed too. I have seen homes with large ornate Bibles on the coffee table. Those Bibles, embossed with gold, are too large and too precious for dirty hands to open. Yet the miraculous power of God's word cannot be unleashed if it is unread. And dirty hands are the ones that need it the most. And we all have dirty hands.

"OK, you can stay," I told Honeybun, "But no shedding on it!"

Isaiah 6: 3-7
“Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty;
   the whole earth is full of his glory.”
 ⁴ At the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was filled with smoke.
 ⁵ “Woe to me!” I cried. “I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty.”
 ⁶ Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. ⁷ With it he touched my mouth and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.”

Luke 5: 12
...When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, “Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean.”

More undignified

I wonder if rubber ducky shower curtains and bright yellow walls give the proper amount of sophistication to the guest bathroom? I moved a nice new set of chrome shelving over the toilet, so that guests now have a place to set their toiletries.... and was contemplating accenting the top shelf with my collection of rubber duckies.

When Asherel and I had gone to Bed, Bath and Beyond for the shelf, I asked her if there was anything else we needed.
"A new shower curtain?" she asked.
That stopped me in my tracks.
"Is there something wrong with the rubber ducky shower curtain?"
"Oh no," she answered. "I just thought you might want a change."

Like into someone with taste?

"I like the rubber ducky shower curtain," I said softly.

And I do. I like the bright yellow bathroom. Yellow is a cheery color. It oozes good natured-ness. And the shower curtain isn't covered with rubber duckies. At least not large rubber duckies.That would be tacky.It is tastefully dotted with small rubber duckies. There is just a happy parade of large ones across the top section. The bottom is elegant blue stripes with carefully appointed small ducks as accents.

But should we ever decide to sell the house, I will probably need to kill the ducks. As a friend once so aptly expressed this sort of designer direction, it is "taste specific." This was her gentle way of saying "trashy...unrefined....childish....undignified."

The great king David, progenitor of the Messiah, was also described as undignified. When he victoriously returned the ark of God to its rightful place, he danced nearly naked down the city street. His wife was horrified as she watched David celebrating with such crude, plebian enthusisam. His response is one of the best retorts I have ever heard- "It will celebrate before the Lord; I will become even more undignified than this...."

Dignity is highly overrated, I think. Childlike abandon and enthusiasm before God is perhaps not just for children.

I got my three rubber duckies and arranged them carefully on the top shelf in the bathroom. I defy anyone to not smile in that room.

2 Samuel 6:21-23

 ²¹ David said to Michal, “It was before the LORD, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the LORD’s people Israel—I will celebrate before the LORD. ²² I will become even more undignified than this, and I will be humiliated in my own eyes. But by these slave girls you spoke of, I will be held in honor.”

Where One little thing might lead.....

"Now what?"
There I stood with the couch upended precariously. It weighed at least 5 times more than me and I still had 30 feet to inch it forward.... and fit it through a door. But my muscles were doing crazy mushy limp giving up kind of wiggles.
"Can I get a little more help here?" I panted to Asherel, who had been drafted into couch moving duty. At first she had thought this was a good exchange for not doing math, but now she was anxious to return to math.

It had started with moving just one little white lamp. And then a few pictures.... and then a broken end table, and then a book shelf and than a rocking chair, and then a small couch, and now here I stood with a queen size sleeper sofa upended and my muscles had quit on me. It was a nuclear arms race of home decorating. To all of you thinking of moving "just that little lamp over there", I warn you, consider the cost carefully first.

"Measure the door," I wheezed weakly.
"Shouldn't we have done that before we moved it? " she asked.
"Don't live life backwards. Move forward! Now measure, please."
"33 inches."
"How wide is the door? Will it fit? "
"30 inches."
"Couches squish. Can we shove it through?"
"I don't know Mom, you measure."
Hmmm. Not likely. The width of the couch was solid wood frame. No squish room at all. We would have to upend and walk it in, pivoting it around the corner.
"Why are we doing this?" asked Asherel.
I chose not to answer, mostly because I was gasping for oxygen to fuel my muscles that were increasingly wobbly.
"Hold the couch, please," I said, though in all honesty, I am not sure I said "please". For this I will toss and turn on my bed when Asherel goes off to college.
While Asherel obediently waited with the behemoth couch, I ran and got the furniture dolly. Arvo got me one the last time I moved "just one little lamp."

We managed to get the dolly under the couch, wrestled it through the door and then slid it through a just wide enough passage beside the pool table.

"Where will it go?" asked Asherel.
"Along that wall," I answered, leaning my blue face against the cushions.
"Will it fit?"
"We will make it fit. That may entail moving that one little wall over there....."
We huffed and we puffed and the couch slid finally into its new home. It fit perfectly. We collapsed on the couch and gazed happily at our work.
At least I gazed happily. Asherel again asked, "Why did we do this?"
"Go do your math," I groaned.

Ironically, at her gavel club meeting the next hour, one student did a speech on ripping her arm half way out of her shoulder joint by moving a heavy object. I was listening, though my eyes were closed and my head was on the table, and my aching arms were stretched out in a facsimile of sleep. The student closed the speech saying, "I never thought that something so simple as moving something heavy could result in so much pain and such a bad injury." I peeked through one eye at the gruesome pictures she was showing of the actual operation to stitch her bone back into her shoulder joint.

I have heard a few messages about "counting the cost" lately. God is naturally in on this discussion as well.
He gives us plenty of incentives to follow Him, but He also doesn't want us to take faith lightly. Once we take the leap, we are admonished not to turn back. Being a true disciple in any endeavor involves commitment and passion to see it through to the end. Half hearted devotion to God is as crazy as moving a 500 pound couch, standing it on its end, and thinking, "That's enough."

Proverbs 20:25 (New International Version)

 ²⁵ It is a trap to dedicate something rashly
   and only later to consider one’s vows.

Luke 14:30-32 (New International Version)

 ²⁸ “Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Won’t you first sit down and estimate the cost to see if you have enough money to complete it? ²⁹ For if you lay the foundation and are not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule you, ³⁰ saying, ‘This person began to build and wasn’t able to finish.
   ³¹ “Or suppose a king is about to go to war against another king. Won’t he first sit down and consider whether he is able with ten thousand men to oppose the one coming against him with twenty thousand? ³² If he is not able, he will send a delegation while the other is still a long way off and will ask for terms of peace

An Artist's Home

I think it is safe to say that no one has ever left my house, and turned longingly to her friend saying, "Wow, her taste in decorating and design is impeccable."

I think it is likely that visitors leave shaking their heads and wondering how an artist, a lover of beauty and creativity could have a home so.... well, not that. I had one friend who for years would drag me to the Open Designer Home shows, and point out all the lovely details that someone talented, like an ARTIST, could do if she wanted. It is not that I didn't get the hint. I agreed with her. An artist probably could do that if they were so inclined.

It is not that I don't want a beautiful aesthetically pleasing space.... it is that it is so expensive and time consuming to create one. There are so many other more admirable ways to spend time and money. Our friend and missionary, Brian Duggan spends his this week in Haiti, bringing diapers and water to orphaned babies lined up by crumbling walls. Our animal heroes Nicole and Gene subsist on peanut butter so they have money for the horses and dogs they have rescued (though she manages to have a beautiful home that is somehow always clean despite being filled with the dogs she works with.) But it is not even just the money issue. I just don't seem to have a knack at home decorating.

And as if my natural inability were not glaring enough, I now have given in to the ever growing set for our Destination Imagination Team Challenge, and decided for the next 4 months, my living room will be decorated by monstrous creations 7 feet high made of PVC, cardboard, cloth, and foam. Giant rather frightening puppets stare at me with their beady eyes as I creep out of the bedroom. I have removed all the furniture from the great room so the kids have room to stage their set, and then slide it into place. (Not that the furniture is highly prized, most are items I snagged from a garage sale or better yet, dumped at roadside....) During the days when they are not here practicing, the mammoth set is moved into the vacant college boys' room. During those days, the great room is a towering, silent cavern, echoing every toe click. Huge empty floor stretches under the formal chandelier, crying out to visitors, "Can you believe what a decorating schmuck must live here to think this is attractive?"

My walls are covered with my artwork, so the now empty room, when the giant puppets aren't smiling their spooky smile at me, does have the feel of an art gallery. That is not normally the look homeowners are going for, but maybe I should consider charging admission. So, I sit here in my empty cave, and avoid glancing at the open door of the boys' room where one puppet is leering at me. I see the little banana car Anders painted with painstaking care for the AWANA Grand Prix sitting on a nearby shelf. I see hundreds of little clay animals that Asherel has created over the years. I see the suspension bridge made of popsicle sticks the boys made years ago in our first fumbling homeschool years on top of the tall bookcase, beside the pink candles Matt made by pouring wax over icecubes in a tin can. I look around my home and I don't see Martha Stewart applauding, but I hear the echoes of children's laughter.

Numbers 24: 4-6

⁴ the oracle of one who hears the words of God,
who sees a vision from the Almighty, ^a]">[a]
who falls prostrate, and whose eyes are opened:

⁵ "How beautiful are your tents, O Jacob,
your dwelling places, O Israel!

⁶ "Like valleys they spread out,
like gardens beside a river,
like aloes planted by the LORD,
like cedars beside the waters.