Lessons Learned from a Bathroom Floor

Key Verse: “In that day, I will restore the fallen shelter of David: I will repair its gaps, restore its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old.” Amos 9:11 (CSB)

I hope you accept my invitation to pull up a chair, grab a cup of coffee and chat for a while. Let’s talk about four unique words that have become so important to me. Repair, restore, rebuild and redeem. Four beautiful things my God does and how He doesn’t leave you in a mess in the process.

The last couple of months have been some of the hardest I have ever gone through. I have wrestled, cried, struggled, and even had a couple of breakdowns in the mix. Yet, the reason I am still standing and still putting pen to paper is that the mighty arms of God are strong enough to carry us and don’t ever give out.

Hallelujah!

He holds us up and empowers us to keep walking when all we want to do is sit down and quit.

Initially, what was supposed to be a two-week bathroom remodel turned into three months of chaos. The people we first hired to do the job tore out walls, made a big mess, and then walked off the job.

My husband has been battling MS for the last 13 years, for those of you who don’t know. Unfortunately, all the stress from the ordeal caused my husband to suffer a relapse. So at one end of my house was the mess and leaky toilet. On the other end, my ailing husband. I was in the middle. In the middle, at war with all the “what if this” and “what if that” darts of the enemy and the voice in my head on repeat asking will this season ever end. I have been a mess, Y’all.

After making several calls and praying like crazy, we finally found a contractor willing to work us around his other schedule. It was by no means a quick fix, but we could get some plumbing problems corrected and the shower working in my solitary bathroom. But then the waiting set in, and this girl doesn’t do waits well.

On one of the worst days, I went to the bathroom and sat down the barren floor, looked around at the torn-out walls, and empty space where my vanity had once sat and just broke down.

Here’s the thing. I looked around and saw myself. There was more exposed than ripped-out walls and more seen than a pulled-up floor.

Chips in my faith were now exposed. Doubt had come to the surface, and fear and worry were also now visibly seen. My emotions had been stowed all over the place. There, on the floor, lay all my feelings of being completely tossed aside and forgotten. Exposed was the hurt that someone could have deserted us that we had trusted. But also uncovered was the pain I felt, thinking God had abandoned me as well.

Soul-searching questions were coming to the surface. Questions like, “Why would God allow this to happen to me with everything else I had going on?” There were also thoughts of all the unknowns involving me and my husband’s future spinning out of control. Plus, the loneliness of being a full-time caregiver with no friends and co-workers to chat with every day had taken its toll.

Having to endure yet another long wait for better days ahead was just too much. So as I sat down on the bare floor, I poured the mess of me right smack dab out in the middle of my messy bathroom.

The wonderful thing is that I studied a passage of scripture about repair, restore, and rebuild right around the time this bathroom ordeal happened. The verses grabbed hold of my heart, and I had wrestled with them for days. I prayed over them, looked them up in commentaries, and even did keyword searches and even read a couple of blog posts all about these different words. Then it even showed up on an IG post in big, bold letters staring me in the face. God knew before I did what was going on way down deep inside my heart.

I try so hard to be strong. I hold myself to such a high standard and want so much to be found pleasing to the Lord that I push myself. Now don’t let that give you the impression that I don’t make mistakes, have days I am flat out grouchy and struggle some days to hold on to my faith, but I have this drive inside me that even when everything screams in me to quit, I can’t do it. My Pastor calls it a “holy stubbornness.” He has it too, and it has kept him going through some dark valleys of his own.

God is whispering to my heart some things that have been hard to accept. Life for me is changing. I have decisions to make soon, and I want to trust in my Jesus, but going through things you haven’t gone through before can still be super scary. I’ve walked part of this journey out, but I still have miles to go. I have put my faith journey out there for people to see, and boy does the enemy want me to fail.

My daughter and grandson left for vacation last week, and I couldn’t go with them. Again. But the most challenging part is that I can no longer go to church service in person right now because my husband might need me. My life is full of commitments and responsibilities that are soul-consuming some days. They leave me with tons of questions that almost always begin with the words “Why Lord?”

The words in Amos 9:11 have hung like a banner over me even on the days I wasn’t aware they were there. They read,

“In that day, I will restore the fallen shelter of David: I will repair its gaps, restore its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old.”

It is a must-needed message I need to remember. That whole scenario that the church had been promised such a bright glowing future grabs me. It has been like a life rope throw out to me in the middle of a strong current that threatened to pull me under the dark water. A life rope that this drowning girl has grabbed hold of and is hanging on for dear life.

The Lord’s declaration (vs. 12) was a God-given promise that God’s people in Christ would thrive and be spiritually blessed. It is that promise that God would restore his people even after the captivity they found themselves in, and He would rebuild the ruined places. All of them. Every broken place would indeed be repaired just like He promised.

But these promises were not just for their unforeseeable future. God fulfilled part of the promise when the captivity of 70 years ended, and He reestablished them in their land. The gift of grace and salvation then birthed the church. But there is more to be performed for us here and now. It is about a promise that God will never leave his people in hopelessness or despair. Period.

God never leaves us anywhere dark and scary. We are his children. He protects what is His and fights for us. He delivers, sets free, and heals. He breaks us out of prisons, rescues us from pits, brings down our giants, and wrestles lions on our behalf.

Everything we read about between the pages of scripture is true, and it just didn’t happen for this little band of people called the Israelites. It is still written for us today, who are His people too. We get to experience His amazing love and deliverance for everything we go through in our lives, just like they did. Over and over again.

So with a bit of help from dictionary.com here is what God has promised to do for you and me.

1.) Repair. He will restore to good or sound condition after decay or damage; mend. Yes, He helped me repair my bathroom, but it has been a big, bold reminder of what He is doing in my heart and every aspect of my messy life.

2.) Restore. He will bring back into existence and use. He will bring back to a state of health, soundness, or vigor. He is going to take all the broken places and put them back together again. Any form of brokenness in my life or yours is not staying that way. God has plans to do some pretty amazing things. Put back together and gloriously displayed is going to happen.

3.) Rebuild. He will replace, strengthen and reinforce. He will reverse, reshape, or reorganize. He will build again or refresh. He is going to put us back together stronger and even more beautiful. Great are his plans for us.

In other words, He is going to take what is broken, shattered, and rendered to a state of disarray and disrepair, and He will turn it into something beautiful and more spiritually alive than ever. He is going to take all the mess and redeem it. Redeem it for His glory and our good. And Yes, He even repaired, restored and rebuilt my bathroom.

I always say at the end of my blog posts, “See you in the field.” So let me leave you with this beautiful promise to add to the other one I have just shared.

Let God hang it like a banner over you in days to come. Our days in the field have great worth and promise that includes future restoration for all the barren, torn up, and messed up places of this crazy out-of-control world. Jesus is soon coming, and we won’t recognize any of it when He gets done.

“Look, the days are coming – this is the Lord’s declaration.
When the plowman will overtime the reaper
and the one who treads the grapes,
the sower of the seed.
The mountains will drip with sweet wine,
and all the hills will flow with it.
I will restore the fortunes of my people Israel.
They will rebuild and occupy ruined cities,
plant vineyards and drink their wine,
make gardens and eat their produce.
I will plant them in their land,
and they will never again be uprooted
from the land that I have given them.
The Lord, your God, has spoken.” Amos 9: 13-15

What a promise!

So stay in the field, sister. And don’t “grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up. Gal 6:9 (ESV)

Susan