IKEA furniture: take two
“Oh shit,” I said aloud to myself (and my cats who were watching, no doubt highly amused). I’d just spent the entire afternoon of my Sunday assembling a piece of furniture from IKEA and 4 pathetic chairs.
*Okay, stop laughing. I know you know what’s next, but at least let me tell my war story!*
How can something so simple looking be THIS complicated?! For starters, it actually helped looking at the pictures upside down. (Or so I told one of my feline spectators anyway…). But I swear I counted and sorted all 3 thousand pieces exactly like the instructions “said” to do through the little stick figure images. So why do I have so many leftovers? And what’s that piece in the plastic bag for? It looked finished to me!
Okay, bookcase done. Check.
Chairs done. Check.
“Wait… hang on. That’s weird.” Again… said to my cats.
And then it hit me. You know the feeling. (I said stop laughing…) The “seriously? It’s backwards?!” feeling.
Yup. I got the pieces together… all by myself using my pink-handled “dad-these-are-my-tools” tools. And mighty proud I was too! Except… yeah… the backwards parts (and the missing piece).
Most certainly no one would have noticed that the legs of my chairs (all of my chairs, because I’m very consistent and systematic when I do things right… and wrong…) were backwards, and the backs had a funny tilt away from the table.
Nonetheless, it was now disassembly time. And following this, time for IKEA furniture: take two.
I’d all but forgotten this slightly-embellished story until my afternoon paddle on the lake today. Cruising along at exactly very-few-feet-per-minute (so basically floating since I was a bit tired today), I was having a nice long think about where I was in life and all the shi* that had happened over the past 8 months.
I’d never worked so hard on myself physically or mentally than I had over the past 4 years. Yet I felt like, rather than feeling much better assembled and starting to get things together (finally in the end of the 3rd and start of the 4th decade… but who’s counting??), just when I thought I was sturdy and had built myself back up pretty solidly from a past of living in fragmented pieces, and surely that meant a time of reprieve had finally graced me, my life and I completely fell apart.
This morning, while eating breakfast (well, actually just eating cottage cheese straight from the tub because my husband was gone and that’s what I do when no one’s looking ;) ) before a friend picked me up to give me a lift to the lake (still can’t drive due to my broken leg), I had listened to a short sermon of sorts on YouTube.
The sermon reminded me about how abundantly God uses brokenness to carry out His work in us. Nobody wants to be broken, but everybody needs to be… mostly because, without the rebuilding that comes in our lives afterwards, our characters are never fully complete.
Remember Joseph who was only 17 years old when his older brothers left him for dead and then sold him into slavery. It was the WORST of times and yet God used it ultimately for His good, and for Joseph’s good. Years later Joseph would say to his brothers, "you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good" (Gen. 50:20).
Moses, who showed admirable strength and wisdom as a young man in Egypt was impressive by all standards and had tremendous potential. But at one point he had to run for his life and hide out in a dessert tending sheep for 40 years! After 4 decades, when the LORD finally called on Moses from a burning bush, Moses replied: “O my Lord, I am not eloquent,...I am slow of speech and slow of tongue.” (Ex. 4:10). Moses had once "supposed that his brethren would have understood that God would deliver them by his hand" (Acts 7:25). But he no longer felt usable. He felt humbled and broken. He dealt with anger and mistrust.
Sure enough, though, the Lord used Moses to lead the entire nation of Israel out of captivity in Egypt, provided them with counsel, led them through battle, and helped them obey the Lord’s commands all the way to their Promised Land.
On his way to becoming King, David had to spend 10 terribly long years running from Saul and living in the wilderness. But it was during these worst of times that he learned to trust God in a much deeper way and wrote the Psalms that now minister to our hearts when we are at our most broken.
The trials I, and you, will face won’t be pretty. Nor will they be comfortable. Nothing great can come from the comfort zone.
“It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply." - A.W. Tozer
But we can gain reassurance through the battles from Isaiah 6:3 & 7 which says,
3: To all who mourn in Israel, he will give a crown of beauty for ashes, a joyous blessing instead of mourning, festive praise instead of despair. In their righteousness, they will be like great oaks that the Lord has planted for his own glory.
7: Instead of shame and dishonor, you will enjoy a double share of honor. You will possess a double portion of prosperity in your land, and everlasting joy will be yours.
Blessed and held in peace are those who can see the hand of God in the hardest of times and yet realize that there is a bigger picture of good in all that is at play. For those who love God "all things work together for good" Rom. 8:28.
James says, "My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience." (Ja. 1:2-3). As difficult as we KNOW the trials will be, and how often they will come, we also KNOW that God is at work through these trials. He is producing endurance and making us stronger through them.
"But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing." James 1:4
Maybe God was simply disassembling me so He could put me back together properly, and with all my pieces this time. I didn’t do a terribly sloppy job of putting together my life after letting go of anorexia and having to figure out who I was (more complicated than IKEA instructions btw). Nonetheless, I know that a lot of it I tried to do by myself. I wasn’t very good at reading my Bible instruction manual. And there were quite a few, let’s say, “wonky” bits that needed sorting out, along with several missing, neglected pieces.
So, though I had assembled myself back together fairly well, I was a long ways from sturdy, and I had obviously misplaced my care and troubleshooting guide. God knew I wasn’t yet finished… there were still parts left in the bag.
Me: take two.
Recreated by the Craftsman Himself, this time around I’ll be an even better, stronger version of me.
Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
