Old Rooms, New Paint

It’s almost 2012. 

Time to make new resolutions—except I gave up on doing those a long time ago.

This past week, as I was painting the interior of a huge house, I reflected on this traditional but futile exercise. What is it about the New Year that brings such hope of transformation in some habit or lifestyle? It’s as if a hidden room reveals itself on January 1 filled with treasures of old dreams and new motivations. Like Harry Potter’s Room of Requirement, all I have to do is stand in front of it, think hard about what I need to do for the coming year and poof! I’m standing inside the room where all the needed resources and motivations to change are available to me.

Unfortunately, like the students of Harry’s special school of wizardry, I still have to work hard to learn new habits and make the desired changes. After a while, it gets too hard to even think about what I need in order to get in. The room disappears for another January 1.

Perhaps what’s needed is not the special Room of Requirement (the title may reveal the possible problem), but just a fresh perspective of the old rooms.

There’s something euphoric about putting fresh paint on the walls of a well-worn room. All of a sudden everything seems new. There’s a different feel to the room. Painting a room ends up including a process of cleaning, cobweb removal and repairing. Hidden flaws are exposed. Concealed creatures, usually dead, are uncovered. Dusty surfaces are revealed. Once the room is cleaned and painted, it is transformed into something new.

But it’s not really new. The room is still the same old room. It just feels new and vibrant with life.

I wonder if this is what’s really behind our need for January 1. I wonder if my resolutions disappear by February because I view the need for transformation as being a change from bad to good instead of old to new. I can’t sustain being good when I never feel good enough. But I can live into the new since the old always has an opportunity to become new, whether through refreshment or replacement.

As I painted and reflected, I couldn’t help but imagine what hope for the new year would look like if I concentrated on refreshing old rooms instead of disappearing into the Room of Requirement. Instead of forcing a new lifestyle or habit change through resolutions, I imagined cleaning and refreshing old rooms through new thought patterns and values. I imagined my fears as creatures needing to be removed, lies as flaws to be exposed and repaired, and the deep truths of my faith as furniture to be dusted off and revealed in all its beauty and strength.

What I want for the New Year is to feel new and more alive than the year before. Through the years of following Christ, I have found that newness and aliveness comes through deep transformation of old rooms in my life. What’s freeing to me is that this transformation still preserves the real me. I don’t have to make a resolution that’s unrealistic (for example, “I’m going to train for a marathon like my other 50+ year old friends”). Instead I can identify thought patterns that keep me from putting on my sweats and going out the door for a two-mile walk around the block.

What I want for 2012 is to be available for continued remodeling of the rooms of my soul, to be a more refreshed and life-filled “house” to share with others:

By wisdom a house is built, and through understanding it is established;

Through knowledge its rooms are filled with rare and beautiful treasures.

                                                                                    (Proverbs 24:3-4)

I want to wake up on January 1, 2012 with anticipation of newness.

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, she is a new creature;

The old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

                                                             (2 Corinthians 5:17)

I want the same for you – HAPPY NEW YEAR!

"What do you do?"

“So, what do you do?”

For now I hate that question. But I understand why the question was asked by many of the newly reconnected friends. I was recently at my high school reunion. It had been 37 years since I graduated so the yearbooks scattered in the hospitality suite were a lifesaver. I did not recognize most of the faces, but neither did anyone else. No matter how our current body images compared to our yearbook pictures, one thing was certain. We all had aged.

And we all had stories to tell from our journeys since leaving the tiny subtropical island of Okinawa. I would venture to say that most, if not all, probably had stories we never could have foreseen. At this stage in our lives, we had no reason to compare and compete with each other’s stories. We were way past that. As I heard many stories, good ones as well as painful, I observed an absence of masks, a willingness to be vulnerable. The stories were told without excuse or defense. The atmosphere was fragrant with honesty and unpretentiousness.

The only thing that unsettled me was that question. As I said earlier, I understood the question to be a natural one. It was not framed by a need to compare, but by a desire to know me. Yet this question exposed my current “story in the middle.”

I’m not sure what I do.

I mean, I do a lot, but I don’t have a focused “do.” I don’t have a job or career. I’m not pouring myself into one ministry. My weeks start out fairly free but then fly by because I find plenty to do and people to meet with. Now that my husband is retired (sort of), we are enjoying our time together, making up for all the time we sacrificed to raise our kids and he sacrificed to provide so I could stay home. But I am not ready to retire.

Instead I find myself in this in-between life stage. I’ve lived 55 years, been a Christian for 39 of those 55, a wife for 32 and raised 3 sons. In those years I have accumulated stories that are beginning to reveal themes and to lay a pattern that I hope reveals God’s purposes for the last stages of my life. Lord willing, I may have 30 more years of productive life to live. But I have yet to hit my stride. I have yet to say with confidence, “This is what I was born for. This is what I was created to do.”

So I wait. I stay in this “story in the middle.” I resist discouraging thoughts like “It’s too late” or “I’m too old” or “I’m not good enough.” Instead I keep pursuing Christ who knows me, grows me and shows me, not necessarily the road, but just the next step. And I remember that “late” is irrelevant to the eternal and sovereign God, “old” is appreciated when accompanied by wisdom and maturity, and what is truly “good” can only be declared by God.

If anyone else asks me “What do you do?” this is what I will answer.

I can tell you what I’ve done. I can tell you what I hope to be doing. But what I am doing now is enjoying everything I can do while I wait for God to connect what I’ve done with what I will be doing.