Me time.

I always thought that the two words “me time” sounded so selfish. I’m a people pleaser, a mom, a wife, a people pleaser…oh I already said that. (grin)
BUT lately I’ve had some ‘forced’ me time I guess you could say. My house currently looks like this:Do to some crazy electrical issue, we had to gut our kitchen just before the holidays. Ha! Upside, we aren’t really dealing with long waits, and summer rush for outside workers. My hubby however has been doing some INCREDIBLE work to make our home beautiful. Just before the kitchen, he was on a roll with gutting both bathrooms and re-doing them. This is the downstairs bathroom prior to re-model:  And this is the final product, with a dual sink for the kiddos this time!
Then he tackled the upstairs bathroom, and put a door in as well to the office which would later become our bedroom. I tried to find an actual photo of the bathroom from before, it was painted bright orange, so it was a drastic change for sure!  Then he moved on to moving our bedroom across the hall. Again, I wish I had just a normal photo of the room before. It was used to store the anything and everythings…mainly all of my photography equipment and all the art supplies and old photos I have accumulated.

New tongue and groove ceiling

New flooring and wainscoting

This next room, used to be our bedroom. Again, I searched through all old photos and couldn’t find a before of our room. It had carpet and a dark two tone wall color, and a very small closet. He has since scraped the pop corn ceiling, put down new flooring and installed a 9×10 closet that is shared with our bedroom, with a light fixture!

Closet is on the left.

New Office Space!

We have now moved on to the kitchen/living area….I will be sure to post before and afters once they are finished.
So as I was saying, lately I’ve had some me time. My hubby and son have been visiting family (the ticket had been bought prior to the electrical/let’s tear the house apart phase), and my daughter of corse has been in school….so this me time thing in the midst of a MESS has been quite interesting. I have found that it brings up a lot of Yuck AND Hope. When you tear down walls, it makes a HUGE mess, but allows you to see what’s really going on back there (hence the electrical/wiring analogy). It allows for mending, fixing what was/is broken, starting fresh etc… With each sound of the hammer, as annoying and painful to the ear drums that it is, it’s also a sound of NEW. I have ALWAYS been enamored with “before and after” photos. They are laced with Hope, and Joy, and Peace. (After typing that last sentence, I wanted to erase it because it sounds a bit too deep or even cheesy.) But in all actuality, our lives are a before and after. It’s only by God’s amazing grace that the after is so much better than the before. I despise living in filth, but if it means a better After, I’m all in. Don’t be afraid to let those ‘walls’ that have some mystery ‘electrical issue’ scare you. You know the ones, Fear of true intimacy, What will they say if I speak my mind? I can’t come clean, they’ll hate me for sure, I will never forgive them for what they did…. the list goes on and on. Rip into those lies, Let Hope be your safety net to fall on, and see that it’s better on the other side. Giving up, and settling are NOT the After for you. Go big or go home right!?! I once screwed up so bad (well on my list of screw ups, it was the ‘worst’), I just wanted to end it all. It took me a year or so to realize that Pride was the root of that thought. As though I was above any kind of screw up or bad decision, so quitting on my family and myself was the answer?!? It was a relief to finally, and yes I say FINALLY realize that by numbering my ‘screw ups’ on a scale of 1-10 was not something Jesus did, so why was I? Some of you reading this may not even relate and some may be in tears. I grew up in the church and somewhere along the line I ‘learned’ that there was some ‘sins’ worse than others…I never quite picked up on the whole, ‘Jesus was really only stern and even down right angry with crap religiosity thinking like that.’ The, “I’m better than you are because I don’t sin like you or as bad as you” crap. Needless to say, I had some faulty wiring going on for too long, until the hammer came in to “fix” it. I was playing with fire in my faulty thinking for too long. Just like the black smoke that was coming from the oven when my hubby rounded the corner a  month ago, it all could have been worse. We could have lost the house if we weren’t home. Pride, not my ‘screw up’ was the true source of my issue. I’ve never shared really on this topic. I never knew how to put it all into words until I had a literal visual and tangible thing to compare it to. One thing I’ll say about all of this. If you are playing with fire currently. You’ll know it in your heart if you are. Don’t wait for the black smoke to appear and set your world spinning. Pick up the hammer yourself, in other words, come clean, ask for help. NO ONE is above it. No one.
p.s. Writing is obviously NOT my strong point, or good grammer for that matter. sorry. 🙂 I know this wasn’t the ‘prettist’ blog to read/see, but rest assure, I will post the After photos of the living and kitchen area. In the mean time, I will not lose hope! lol