Therapeutic post

I don't know if I am cut out for this.

I don't know why I bought a fixer-upper house. I'm still not sure why I bought a house, period.

I don't even care about it. I'm leaving this crumbling place soon. Very soon, in the big scheme of things. I'm not emotionally attached to it. I'm not going to raise a family here. I get minimal satisfaction out of completed projects--because there aren't any. I started painting a year ago, and still have more to go. I started working on the yard several months ago-and it's still an ugly jungle. We started re-doing the kitchen back in the dead of winter-and it's still going.

I'm tired of running to Menard's or Lowe's every other day. Or every day the past week. Or twice a day today. I'm tired of adding more and more dollars on the tab of money I've spent on this house. It's ridiculous. Probably not a large amount of money as far as home improvements go, but too much for me. I've got better things to spend my money on.

Like trips to Honduras. I'm dying to go.

It just seems stupid. People are starving all over the world, churches beg for funds to help the homeless, my own friends can't get to Africa to work with the poor because of funding, and I pour money into a tiny, odd conglomeration of wood.

I'm tired of things like hearing the stair rail rip out of the wall. The fridge leaking water in the dining room while it's displaced out of the kitchen. Window frames breaking in my hand. Starting one project to discover three others. Decorations peeling paint off the wall. Stripping screws. Rotten wood. Broken bits. Torn up hands. Dust everywhere. Mediocre results. Making mistakes that cost time and money.

And yet, I can't stop. I (and now, Bob) have started trying to salvage this house, and we've dug ourselves holes we have to get out of (or should I say, patch over) if we ever want to have hope of selling this house to at least recover the money we've put into it.

And I have a hard time looking over the imperfections. I know the guest room closet is still purple even though I never go in it. I know the outside spicket in the front doesn't work even though I've never had to use it. I know there are at least two torn window screens, even though most people would never see them.

Pathetic, aren't I?

I know, I know. I know all the good reasons to have a house--it's financially smart, you have a place to host others, it's a ministry tool, I'm learning useful skills, etc. I've repeated them to myself and so many others enough times to make you nauseous. But right now, with summer passing by with me spending most days working on projects that are only going to look so-so, it seems absolutely a waste of time.

And this is the mood I'm in.