On breaking things.
I've never owned so much before.
It was never something I really thought about, when I dreamed about growing up. I thought about being married and having a place to make our home, and maturing into a wiser, deeper person. But, I never anticipated all the stuff that goes along with making a home.
I do have such sweet memories of registering for wedding gifts together!! It was the largest shopping spree of my life. :) It was during Isaac's first trip to visit my home in Georgia - we went to the Peachtree City's Bed, Bath and Beyond and walked around with a little scanner choosing out plates, our favorite silverware, glasses, platters, pots & pans, utensils, cutting boards, pillows for our living room, bedding, towels, and rugs. It was our first step of building our new home together.
So, we went to our wedding showers, and received gifts in the mail and slowly accumulated nearly all of the items we would need or had wanted for our apartment home. I can still picture the boxes and stacks of gifts in the basement bedroom of Dad & Mom Funk's house.
Then, I remember this snapchat from Isaac just a week or two before the wedding; moving things into the apartment and getting it ready to become our home.
Then, we got married and finished unpacking boxes, opened the last of our wedding gifts, hung pictures, arranged books on selves and plates in cabinets and day to day life started.
The first time I preheated the oven to bake some scones for my husband, our apartment filled with a terrible stench and soon after, one by one, all four of our smoke detectors began to beep. I thought this was a terribly disappointing and a frustratingly unlovely first baking experience in our apartment. However, a small while later, I realized what the smell and smoke was from; I had placed all of our brand new baking sheets and pizza stone in the drawer beneath our oven. ("A storage drawer, how nice!") And some of them still had the labels on them ("I'll just store these here for now, and when I'm ready to use them, I'll remove the labels and clean them properly.") To my dismay, I realized that my simple mistake had damaged our baking sheets - the labels had burned into the pans, leaving permanent rusty-brown stains. I had mistaken our oven's boiler as a storage drawer for our brand new baking sheets.
They still work fine, of course, so it was not the end of the world. But our brand new pans - never even been used - forever damaged. I was so sad - disappointed that I had not known and my ignorance had ruined our beautiful pans.
Then came more mistakes:
burning peppers in the oven and further staining a baking sheet with a pepper-shaped stain
burning the edge of a white throw blanket on a candle
breaking two wine glasses while washing them
dropping my iphone on tile and shattering the screen
and perhaps the most disappointing spilling 3/4 of my glass of red wine on our new living room rug (purchased with my Christmas bonus)
I really struggle with feeling defined by these mistakes - all the whispers of not being good enough find a quick road into my mind. I don't want to be the type of person who makes mistakes! I want to be classy, and accomplished, and graceful. I want to take care of the things I have been given.
As they just keep happening, I'm trying to figure out how to process mistakes - I know my identity is too wrapped up in feeling like I'm "doing good" -- not enough in simply being loved by Christ. I'm not "the type" of person who makes mistakes. I am a person who makes mistakes. And I believe that through these mistakes the Lord is desiring a cultivate in me a heart which holds less tightly to temporary things.
"He doesn't name you by your weakness, your sin, your lack. Instead He names us by what He has done for us. He names us by how He sees and knows us. He calls us His masterpiece; He calls us His children; He calls us friends; He calls us accepted....God doesn't look at you and see what you lack. He looks at you and sees His child who has been loved, accepted and redeemed." (Ann Swindell)
As a young girl, I had a new Bible that I really wanted to keep clean and new. I was nervous to even open it, for fear of wrinkling it. But then, on the inside cover I wrote "This Bible Belongs to Jesus" - it was my way of releasing it and saying "this is not really mine, it is just mine to care for. If something happens to it or if it is ruined, it was never really mine to begin with."
I need to have that lose grip. I want to really take care of things, to enjoy them, and to better them and to be always growing into a more accomplished, more thoughtfully graceful person.
But, not to be defined by what I have and how beautiful it is. This is so hard for me!
I'm a young wife with so much to learn about materialism, identity and what the drawer beneath my oven is actually meant for.
It was never something I really thought about, when I dreamed about growing up. I thought about being married and having a place to make our home, and maturing into a wiser, deeper person. But, I never anticipated all the stuff that goes along with making a home.
I do have such sweet memories of registering for wedding gifts together!! It was the largest shopping spree of my life. :) It was during Isaac's first trip to visit my home in Georgia - we went to the Peachtree City's Bed, Bath and Beyond and walked around with a little scanner choosing out plates, our favorite silverware, glasses, platters, pots & pans, utensils, cutting boards, pillows for our living room, bedding, towels, and rugs. It was our first step of building our new home together.
So, we went to our wedding showers, and received gifts in the mail and slowly accumulated nearly all of the items we would need or had wanted for our apartment home. I can still picture the boxes and stacks of gifts in the basement bedroom of Dad & Mom Funk's house.
Then, we got married and finished unpacking boxes, opened the last of our wedding gifts, hung pictures, arranged books on selves and plates in cabinets and day to day life started.
The first time I preheated the oven to bake some scones for my husband, our apartment filled with a terrible stench and soon after, one by one, all four of our smoke detectors began to beep. I thought this was a terribly disappointing and a frustratingly unlovely first baking experience in our apartment. However, a small while later, I realized what the smell and smoke was from; I had placed all of our brand new baking sheets and pizza stone in the drawer beneath our oven. ("A storage drawer, how nice!") And some of them still had the labels on them ("I'll just store these here for now, and when I'm ready to use them, I'll remove the labels and clean them properly.") To my dismay, I realized that my simple mistake had damaged our baking sheets - the labels had burned into the pans, leaving permanent rusty-brown stains. I had mistaken our oven's boiler as a storage drawer for our brand new baking sheets.
They still work fine, of course, so it was not the end of the world. But our brand new pans - never even been used - forever damaged. I was so sad - disappointed that I had not known and my ignorance had ruined our beautiful pans.
Then came more mistakes:
burning peppers in the oven and further staining a baking sheet with a pepper-shaped stain
burning the edge of a white throw blanket on a candle
breaking two wine glasses while washing them
and perhaps the most disappointing spilling 3/4 of my glass of red wine on our new living room rug (purchased with my Christmas bonus)
I really struggle with feeling defined by these mistakes - all the whispers of not being good enough find a quick road into my mind. I don't want to be the type of person who makes mistakes! I want to be classy, and accomplished, and graceful. I want to take care of the things I have been given.
As they just keep happening, I'm trying to figure out how to process mistakes - I know my identity is too wrapped up in feeling like I'm "doing good" -- not enough in simply being loved by Christ. I'm not "the type" of person who makes mistakes. I am a person who makes mistakes. And I believe that through these mistakes the Lord is desiring a cultivate in me a heart which holds less tightly to temporary things.
"He doesn't name you by your weakness, your sin, your lack. Instead He names us by what He has done for us. He names us by how He sees and knows us. He calls us His masterpiece; He calls us His children; He calls us friends; He calls us accepted....God doesn't look at you and see what you lack. He looks at you and sees His child who has been loved, accepted and redeemed." (Ann Swindell)
As a young girl, I had a new Bible that I really wanted to keep clean and new. I was nervous to even open it, for fear of wrinkling it. But then, on the inside cover I wrote "This Bible Belongs to Jesus" - it was my way of releasing it and saying "this is not really mine, it is just mine to care for. If something happens to it or if it is ruined, it was never really mine to begin with."
I need to have that lose grip. I want to really take care of things, to enjoy them, and to better them and to be always growing into a more accomplished, more thoughtfully graceful person.
But, not to be defined by what I have and how beautiful it is. This is so hard for me!
I'm a young wife with so much to learn about materialism, identity and what the drawer beneath my oven is actually meant for.
