August’s projectAugust 22, 2015
I love projects, I love the dream like planning of them, the excitement as you start and the great sense of achievement you get when they are complete. If I’m honest I often fall pray to spending far too long at the beginning of the process and not getting to the end often enough. So I’ve set myself a challenge, at least once a month I’m going to do a project and share it here. I’ve got a whole host of ideas and very little in the way of budget so frugal is the name of the game.
August’s project was a seat for the bedroom come playroom.
Under the window sat some pampers boxes, forming a little wall, reminiscent of a window seat. Bouncing around the house was a wooden plank used as part of a table top when we first got married, it’s been a variety of things since, and one day I put two and two together. Add to the mix some old foam pieces we were given years ago, a bit of fabric from the stash, and the seat took shape. The base is 2 boxes and the end is a shiny gold cake board that formed part of a nappy cake. My big splurge was some new fabric to glue to the boxes, I used just over half the £5 piece – not bad going pennies wise.
While I thought it may turn into a big project it was actually really simple. The foam pieces didn’t quite fit so I formed a sort of mosaic and sadly it shows on closer inspection. We nailed the fabric, stretching it as we went, and good old PVA adhered the fabric to the boxes. I left them open-able for storage so they are now full, giving us the added bonus of weighing them down. For safety I connected the two boxes with a couple of plastic bolts I had laying around. (I took a few pictures as it progressed.)
Even if it’s not a professional finish it is lovely and comfortable, easy to move about, and I think it looks great! This second play area outside the living room has beautiful light and fewer safety hazards, I’m already really enjoying using it.
that we should call it homeAugust 19, 2015
It’s three weeks since we left this little corner of the globe for our holiday, if that word rightly applies. Having been ‘back’ a few days now, got my head around the change, the return, the messing up of schedules and the run-off of trinkets with new homes to be found, I’m sitting again in the familiar chair pondering what I learnt, how I moved, and how much was my soul watered and relaxed by the break.
It’s a missionaries prerogative to return home and yet not really know where that is. Mission work does that, it waters down the notion of home, condenses it into a suitcase and all the while expands it’s borders. It’s a addictive feeling, something I can only faintly liken to having a long distance relationship, the pull of the other always carried while the weight of the present feels comfortably right. It splits you, breaks you, and mends you in a way that leaves your feet itching and heart wild. And it should be addictive, it should be painful, and it should be mundanely wonderful every time your feet hit that new soil.
The addictive nature of it can tempt our independent lives to play the ‘until the next time’ game, can leave mission open-ended in the wrong sort of manner. All mission should be open ended, relationships and support should not die as the flight leaves the runway, interdependence should not be left hanging, but equally long term mission is a very different thing to missionary as a lifestyle. Long term mission is a commitment as binding as the vows given upon our wedding day. It’s a decision made by definite choice, a choice that demands to be, gladly or painfully, renewed every morning. It’s writing the end date in the sand and being open to the wind blowing it away, that security gone, there is no ‘next time’ any-more, it’s just time.
Going ‘home’ becomes a sort of bitter sweet holiday, ties are reconnected and shredded once again, promises of connection renewed to fade as days pass, stories exchanged, pleasantries uttered, occasional truths leaked.
Going ‘home’ gives glimpses of the other life we could have had, the one we turned down, dangled like carrots in our faces.
Home churches become sending churches and every second in them feels bitter sweet. As I stood in the final church service singing my heart out to ‘when I was lost’ I recognised that this was my survival food, my rations for the journey. It wouldn’t matter if the journey was off to university, out to the daily grind of work or off around the globe. This was my travel pack, my inner child’s teddy bear, it was that thing held tightly and only set down at a place designated home. This faith gave me a constant travel companion, and while my home may move His home remained in me.