Ah, remodeling! There have been some changes in our home in the last couple of months. It all started with a small flood and then with the words,"we should redo the kitchen", our world was turned upside down.
It was decided that a wall between the kitchen and dining room should be taken down and that was when the trouble began. This plan thought by us to be wonderful and exciting, as it would open up this part of our house, was thought to be great until the first piece of Sheetrock was removed from the wall. At this point it was discovered that to accomplish our design, every facet of building, excepting the foundation and roof would have to be addressed and changes made to each one before we could put it all back together. Structural issues, so happens that this was a bearing wall, plumbing, heating and electrical wiring would have to be removed and re-done so as to accommodate the open bar between our kitchen and dining room. Since our new cabinets, designed and bought to fit the newly designed space, were already ordered and paid for, we had no choice but to move ahead.
You must understand that in the nearly nineteen years in which I have been married to my sweet wife I have made many changes for the better, or so I had thought. I soon recalled much of the colorful language discarded from my youth. Thoughts of woe entered my mind and I questioned my sanity in this quest. My dear wife, in her wisdom, let me grumble and groan but kept up the encouragement,and in the end, we have a beautiful,new kitchen.
This brings me to my subject. In our world today we all want to be in control of our lives. We plan everything from our wake up, to our work to when we will sleep. We make detailed goals of what we want to achieve and when we want to achieve it. We go to work towards these goals with blinders on and upon their achievement we see that the destination isn't as good we thought it would be. The big house costs more to heat and is harder to keep clean. The new boat takes a lot of gas to run and the insurance for the big car is very expensive. We can create a vicious cycle for ourselves by living for the accomplishment of these goals instead of living for the journey towards them.
In his book, "The Three Deceivers" Richard M. Eyre, contends that the goal, though important in that it gets us moving, is actually the means to another end. As we move toward the accomplishment of the goal, Eyre says that we need to be aware of other opportunities or outcomes that may come into our path unexpectedly.
As we work hard, God puts unforeseen opportunities in our path, after all, He knows better than us what the end result should be.
If I had not decided to remodel my kitchen, I would not have discovered the problems that existed in my heating ducts. I would not have found any of the other issues that could have become larger problems in the future. So now, I not only have a beautiful kitchen, I also have a better built house. The same can happen in all aspects of life, work toward a goal, but keep an eye out because God generally has something better in mind for us, if we let Him give it to us.
