My daughter’s room has been through nearly as many changes as she has over the years. From a darling ladybug/bee/butterfly nursery to a pink princess theme to a transitional stage where she began to despise pink and love mint green. It was then, when she was in seventh grade, that we repainted her walls a seafoam green and gave her bedroom an ocean theme (to honor her love of sea turtles).
Now Kendall is sixteen, and though the seafoam walls remain, the ocean wall decor has changed to K-pop posters, photo grids, fairy lights, macrame hangings, and a letter board. This week, we decided to switch out her dark blue patterned curtains for light peach ones, along with a matching throw.
To complete the more sophisticated look, we ordered a large pouf ottoman cover. Our plan was to stuff it with the foam beads from two other well-loved pouf ottomans I bought years ago (with their multi-colored stripes, they were too busy for her new, more tranquil aesthetic).
When we arrived home from school yesterday, we saw the package on the front porch. I grabbed it and took it inside, eager to get started on this super-easy-and-fun update. I told her to get dressed to go to the gym, that I would just transfer the stuffing from the old ottomans into the new one while she got ready.
I set to work. The new ottoman needed to be held up on all four sides so it didn’t collapse in on itself as the beads were rushing into it. But the old ottomans also had to be held, and then cut and poured just so into the new ottoman. My two hands and I were sorely outdone, and I called on Kendall to come to my rescue.
Half dressed in gym clothes, half dressed in school clothes, she came running in. And together, we snipped the old ottomans for easy foam bead flow. We held up two sides of the new ottoman as best we could. We shimmied and squeezed the old ottomans so the beads would come.
And they did! Like ants from an anthill, these teeny tiny freckle-sized foam beads came marching – absolutely pouring, thousands of them. They cascaded into the open parts of the new ottoman, down the sides that were sagging from lack of support. They rolled onto the floor, covered our socks, and they just kept coming.
As careful as we were trying to be, we were making quite a mess, and I am not one for making messes. So I did what I do in stressful situations – I got punchy. I started laughing hysterically (which made the foam beads jiggle and flow even more). Kendall and I started making jokes and losing our minds. And the beads kept coming, each one racing to beat the ones behind it, a competition of chaos, anarchy in miniature.
But we persevered, determined not to be thwarted by inanimate objects. An hour later, we emerged, sweating, covered in foam beads, stepping on foam beads, clutching the remnants of the old ottoman covers in our hands while heaving up the newly stuffed one. Victors. Triumphant in a simple home decor update. Hear us roar! (Though that’s really the roar of the vacuum you may be hearing. And possibly the crick in my neck, stiff from an hour of sitting and panting and pouring and cleaning up insidious foam beads in their coup to take over the world.)
I was driving this morning, and it hit me how this experience so aligns with what I’ve been going through spiritually. There is a lot of talk of deconstructing these days. This term can mean many things to many people, so let me clarify what I mean. I’m speaking of deconstructing in terms of Christianity, where Christians are taking a closer look at why they believe what they believe, breaking down untruths that they’ve accepted along the way.
I have no desire to deconstruct away from the Bible, but rather, toward it. I believe that the problem is not with Scripture, but with people, with traditions and misinterpretations.
Author Paul David Tripp notes, We should all be deconstructing our faith – we better do it. Because our faith becomes a culture, a culture so webbed into the purity of truth that it’s hard to separate the two. And we better do some deconstructing or we’re going to find ourselves again and again in these sad places.
For me, the goal is not to really change what I believe (Scripture) so much as to develop a path of care instead of a path of cure (expressions borrowed from Author Greg Johnson). Personally, this means a new heart, a humble mindset for me as a believer.
I want to share with you four book recommendations that I have found helpful in my journey.
First off, with my muscle atrophy and all that I have endured throughout the past two years with that, I have learned that the Christian church in general does not always have a place for those with chronic pain. People are nice; they want you to get better.
But once you’ve been hurt or ill for more than a certain time period, no one knows what to say to you. Sometimes, they even want to distance themselves from you because they are wondering what you did wrong to anger God (since your injury or illness or hardship cannot possibly, in their minds, be God’s will or provision for you).
One book that has meant the world to me is KJ Ramsey’s This Too Shall Last. She is a beautiful writer who knows personally what it is to be walking through hardship that many others will never understand. She covers many of the feelings and frustrations of long-term illness, as well as our cultural (which often bleeds into our churches as well) ideal of productivity and success, and how God places value on our weaknesses and Christ’s strength. This book made me feel seen.
Another area is that of body image. I’ve blogged about this book before (On Beach Bodies and Worship, July 2021), but I’ll recommend it again: Jess Connolly’s Breaking Free From Body Shame. Often the church has made being thin into a godly virtue, thus condemning those who struggle with their weight. I love how Jess Connolly addresses this topic and encourages us that our bodies, made by a good God, are good.
My third book recommendation may seem a bit random, but if you ask any of my family members, they will tell you that I just cannot stop talking about it: The Road Back to You by Ian Morgan Cron and Suzanne Stabile. Yes, it’s a book about the Enneagram, one of those personality tests, but I cannot tell you how much it has helped me to understand myself – why I respond the way I do, how my brain works, etc. And it has helped me to understand those I love better as well.
Finally, I am still reading this last one: Still Time to Care/What We Can Learn From the Church’s Failed Attempt to Cure Homosexuality by Greg Johnson. Again, he doesn’t waver on the Bible’s stance, but he so graciously explains (with great historical and statistical research) how the church needs to switch from a paradigm of cure to one of care.
I feel like I’m throwing a lot at you, dear reader, all at once. But hopefully it all comes together with the illustration of updating our old pouf ottomans. In our case, we used what we had (the never-ending waterfall of tiny beaded soldiers) to fill up a new outer shell. We couldn’t believe how many little beads had made up the squish in the old ottomans. We had used them for years and had never seen inside of them to notice the thousands of foam beads that made them what they were.
Likewise, you and I are made up of so much stuffing (for lack of a better word). We have so many inherent qualities that make up who we are, but then we add our life experiences, and there’s so much of us to reflect on and possibly to update as well. We are always under construction. Always growing and changing.
My super-easy-and-fun DIY update obviously did not go as planned. My expectation was to receive the new one while Kendall was at school, and to stuff it and have it ready to surprise her when she walked into her room. But the experience of us stuffing it (and failing!) together was priceless. We learned what not to do, and if we were to do it all over again, we would know what to do differently.
It wasn’t wasted time. It wasn’t wasted effort. There was a greater plan in place than the one I created. And I believe that God doesn’t waste our time either. He doesn’t waste our effort. And He has a plan in place greater than the one we may have constructed for ourselves.
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