Unfinished Project in Progress

Last week I hit the Publish Post button hopeful that someone in blog land would read my SOS for being late, messy and not knowing what to feed my family. The response was awesome and it's really helping me, thank you so much.

I'm hesitant to share too much more about my lack of being anything close to Martha Stewart, the queen of creativity because I don't want sweet Marlene's heart to go into attack mode. I'm afraid though that I must risk her health to share more of me and my imperfect walk with God.

So Miss Marlene, consider yourself warned and read at your own risk. You may want to take a break from reading Write from the Heart since we live too far away from each other for you to just drive over and fix me! ~smiles~

Please note that I am not asking for any more help here. I must stay focused on the first set of advice you all gave me, but I have to share with you about another miracle hungry area of my life.

I LOVE to start projects. Love. With all my heart. I get my supplies needed, I prepare my room and I go to town. Notice I did not say anything about seeing a project to the finish line; I just like to start them. There has to be a name for this condition. A treatment program perhaps.






For example, in my kitchen where I painted only one wall a deep red color. This color had me from the first stroke on the wall. When I anxiously took the blue tape off the wall before it was ready to be removed, my paint job ended up looking like this:

Still looks this way because I am unlike the normal person who would've fixed it right away. I don't even know where I stored the paint if I do want to fix it. I still need to hang what I want to on the wall, but that's another project awaiting. This was like a year ago.





Oh, then there's the unfinished upstairs bathroom. Finished until one day I was sitting atop the ceramic bowl and I guess I got bored so I started to pull the trim I didn't like off the wall. That was like 3 years ago and here is my unfinished project.

I now do my business blindfolded.






This is our son Aaron's room. We had this graffiti artist come in and paint his name with a basketball for the "O" on one whole wall. My son loves it. What he doesn't love his how Mom hung his curtains. For over a year now I've been meaning to buy some curtain rods, but this project too has been left hanging by stuffing the curtain outside and quickly shutting the window.




Looks even tackier from the outside. Especially on a windy day when the curtains are whipping around in the air. Quite the eye sore, inside and out.




This is probably the worst unfinished project though when I decided many months ago to take on a task in the basement. The drop ceiling was green and the walls gold. I went with a tan on both the ceiling and wall. It took me literally all night until my can of paint ran dry.

Normal person: back to store, buy more paint, finish said project.
Lelia: Let paint dry, go to bed and forget you even had a project started.

Gene was unaware when he woke up of my dilemma of the unfinished corner so he was happy when he saw this:

This is what happy husband saw when he turned his head:

Gene's happiness has completely faded as this was a project abandoned 8 months ago. He just avoids looking up when in the basement.




My sweet Geno doesn't like this, but he just rolls with it. Why doesn't he help you ask? I'd rather him not. I grew up with a Dad that knows how to fix anything. Gene grew up in an apartment with a land lord that knew how to fix anything. The only work Gene had to do was dial the phone and the problem was fixed.

I keep reminding him after buying our home 9 years ago that we are the lord of our land and there is no one to call unless we want to pay a ton of money to get our problem solved. So I try to fix stuff myself, but I never finish. It bothers me being surrounded by all of these unfinished projects, but not enough to just get them done. I love what I did here above the kitchen sink. I removed the cupboard doors and it looks pretty like this:

But below the sink looks like this:The cupboard door removed itself and has remained that way for a very long time.

Is it really hard to reattach a door for goodness sake?

Why yes it is.




Don't even get me started to why I painted the kitchen cupboards green. Guess I wanted to take my basement ceiling upstairs with me. The cupboards should have been a one month project that somehow was put on my 2 year plan. By the time I finally finished I was so sick of the color green that I still want to puke on Saint Patty's day. T'was the project Gene unsuccessfully protested.

He should've called the land lord he thinks we have and reported me for defacing the meal prep area.





Somehow, despite all the self-inflicted faults, we still have a loving home. I will tackle all of these projects one by one as soon as I pass my Laundry and Dinner Management 101 classes. Maybe the director of the HGTV channel will see my blog, feel sorry for me and make a story out of my life. Let's join hands and pray shall we?




Aren't you so thankful that this is not how God is with us?

In Paul's letter from prison this is what he says about our Almighty Carpenter:

Philippians 1:6

being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

When God takes us on as His personal project He doesn't quit on us mid-way through, He keeps after us. As He sits on His throne, He pulls off our old ugly trim and renews us with His beauty. The curtains of our hearts are hung up by 4 nails on a tree and when we fall apart He repairs us by swinging His Holy Hammer. He is the Land Lord of our hearts and what a job He does. He even stands back and admires His own work and calls us wonderfully and fearfully made.

When He wants to make changes to us He preps us, gets His supplies together and stays with it until He thinks we're done. As He makes us new creatures, He blows on us with the freshness of His Holy breath to help our paint dry. When we try to finish the job for Him and we pull the tape off too soon He patiently touches up the obvious messes we create.

What a God!

What a Mighty God we serve!!

Have a blessed weekend and remember that we are like my dear friend Amy Brooke's blog title: God's Work in Progress.

~Many Blessings~

Please continue to pray for our friend Rodney Keyes and his wife Vicki who are dealing with the death of their 13 yr old son Jonathan that I posted about yesterday. Thank you.