Fixie Dust

We are making steady progress at the house.  We're extremely grateful for all the help we've had, the volunteers coming in each week, the Westside Ministries crew working away, the Schenks working along side us, my sister helping out with the kids by taking Faith for a week, and my mom and dad, who've come down and helped out for a couple days.  Progress is exciting, but it's taken a lot of people a lot of hard work.

Brittany creating "Fixie Dust"

You can see from this picture that our work has created a lot of dust in the house.  The kids were over at the house one day with us and we saw them picking up saw dust and crumbled plaster and putting it into emptied water bottles.  When we asked what they were doing, Faith replied, "We're collecting fixie dust!"

Justice supervising the work

I think on blogs, or in books, or at conferences we sprinkle the ministries that we are a part of building with a good deal of "fixie dust"!  We can easily spin or glamorize things that are really the hacked off, sawed, demolished results of something that took a lot of sweaty, exhausting, dirty, hard work.  We often find things boiled down and neatly tidied into a couple easy steps, or a frame work, or guiding principles.  But behind each of these are messy lives, relationships, conversations, and conflicts that kicked up a lot of dust.  Behind the clever blog posts, white board illustrations, and power point presentations, lay so many of our hopes, dreams, desires, and expectations, pulverized on the floor.

Speaking of the ministries that we build on the foundation of Christ, St. Paul says, "... the builder will suffer loss but yet be saved - even though only as one escaping through flames."  Jesus called us to come and die.  The calling we have requires much in our life to be demolished.

May we see the "fixie dust" for what it is: the results of the hard work of the Holy Spirit; demolishing and  renovating our lives.

Almost home