A "two trip" project

I've noticed that doing home repairs is tedious and frustrating. At least it is for me. I can't finish a project with less that two trips to the hardware store. Part way through the work I find I need a bolt, a bracket, a wrench and off I go for that thing I need to finish what I started. Then, there is always the second trip for the other things I didn't know I needed. Yesterday afternoon I had to replace a faucet in our bathroom. It seemed an easy job (at least the directions said so), but of course that's not possible.....at least not for me. After much pain and contortion I got the new sink in, turned on the water to test it and IT LEAKED! Off to the hardware store...Teflon tape, silicon sealant and the ever faithful duct tape. More repairs, contortions and pain....one more time to turn on the water and it STILL leaked! Ok, what's going on? Where is this coming from? I know it's never where you think it is and so I was on a quest for the source. Then I find it. The leak is coming from the new faucet I just bought! My work was good. It was the new faucet that was leaking....and so....one more trip to the hardware store. After much pain and twice as much time as it should have taken we now have a beautiful new faucet. No one will ever know all it took to make it happen, but I know.

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My Christian life is like that. It's messy. Things don't always go well or easily. There's a lot of pain involved in getting things to work as I add new "fixtures" to my walk with God. There the frequent visits to his word for instructions on how it should work, what I need to do, what went wrong....and then I'm back at it working once more to see if I can get it right. It's often frustrating, often discouraging...there's the feeling that I'll never get it right. It will never work as advertised, but then, when I'm finished there are wonderful new fixtures to my Christian life that through much pain and suffering look really good. Even when a project turns into more than two trips to God's word to get it finished the results are worth the frustrations!

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