Money in the Walls
“I think this beam may be sinking.” My eyebrows pulled together in a pinch that I often see and dislike in my own father.
I studied the floor where the only beam in the living room stood. Surrounded by torn drywall, exposed wires, and subfloor, my imagination took me fifteen steps forward and the floor began sinking into the basement.
I began to sweat. I didn’t say anything more, just left my weak, uncertain concern hang in the air to be swatted away like the thousands of fallen tree bugs that gathered in the edges of the windowsills.
Our contractor took a closer look and shrugged, “I was like that before we started. I’m not concerned.”
One thing became very clear in that moment: our contractor didn’t know me very well. If he did, he would have recognized that speaking up didn’t come easily for me. I usually chose to say nothing and hope someone heard me. Not a great communication plan.
The damage was done, however, I couldn’t sleep that night. Our floor kept crashing into our basement over and over. My sleeplessness was convincing. The beam was sinking. The house was going to fall in on itself. We were doomed.
I called our contractor first thing in a well-measured panic. I could hear the edge in his voice, “I’ll go back there today and support it. But I’m not concerned.”
Why is this the case? Why can’t we listen to experts when they give us good news and trust them? Why do we overwork worry into collapsing support beams onto our hopes? Why does it seem more natural to believe the worst instead of the best?
It stems from a poor foundation. Love believes the best about others. Self-interest believes the worst about others.
As I was wondering why I was so quick to distrust the one person in this process who I had to put all my trust in, I remembered that I was raised in a family of trust strugglers. We didn’t hand it out easily. Everyone, but us, had an agenda. No one really cared about you. People were only as good as they contributed to your cause. “There are only three kinds of people, Megan. Those who can help you, those who can hurt you, and those who don’t make any difference.”
That was the relational inspiration that was drilled into me as a kid. So when I thought I saw a sinking beam, what I really wondered was, can I trust this person? Can he help me? Hurt me? Or is he just a guy doing a job?
I was confronted by the sinking beam in the most loving way, “if you think you’re sinking, who can you trust?”
TRUST FALL
While my parents are loving people, they were wrong about the three kinds of people there are in the world. Sure, there are people who can help you. And yes, there are people who can hurt you. But oftentimes they are the very same person, just as I have been the helpful and hurtful person in my own marriage and parenting and friendships. But I can’t agree with the third axiom. There isn’t a single person that doesn’t matter. When beams look like they are sinking, its surprising who the people are who help you re-install faith in the process.
Turns out, the beam wasn’t sinking. My trust was.
What had happened was that someone installed the support beam in-between joists. Apparently, that’s a big issue when it comes to sound building structures. Someone had tried to find a shortcut or a quick fix, or maybe they just didn’t have the know-how they thought they had to pull off the support. I don’t mean to over-metaphor everything, but sometimes its just so plain I can’t help it.
Check your support joists. Are you looking for shortcuts or quick fixes that will hold you together, when you really need to restructure the whole house? Look to see if the things or people, jobs, dreams or hopes that you think are holding you up are actually slowly sinking.
Matthew 6:19-21 comes to mind often in this house renovation project, “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Beams don’t sink in the kingdom of God. But when we see something off in the things we call our homes and our relationships, that doesn’t mean we burn the house down. We get to work.
Jesus is our treasure. He has the best ideas of building us back up, of making our very lives a home worth living in so we can invite others into the love we’ve found and enjoy in him.
Just because a beam is installed incorrectly, doesn’t mean we did something wrong ourselves, but it does mean we have a responsibility to fix it.
Mistakes discovered are invitations to learn from valuable teachers. We are wise to inspect the issues that came before us and do our best to correct them. Are the structures you have in place in your life actually capable of bearing the weight of what God has put inside of you to build?
Dreams and risk are weighty. Following a road that is overgrown and foggy isn’t for everyone. The only risk there is in life is trying to do something on your own without the Master Builder checking your work.
Sometimes finding a beam that appears to be sinking is the greatest grace of all. It is also the moment we choose to either depend on a God who is all-wise and all-willing to help or not.
Beams don’t have to fall through the floor to let you know they need to be re-supported. Sometimes you simply need to take the long and tedious route to fix what was never done right in the first place.
It may take more time. More energy. More research. More trust. But it’ll be able to hold you up for the new things that are being built all around you.
It’s perfectly ok to pinch your eyebrows together. To inspect the supports. To admit something may be sinking.
God isn’t afraid of a little poor construction. In fact, restoration is his favorite.
