Being Real
......come into my kitchen

I was going to wait to post pictures of my kitchen until everything was finished but then that goes against what I have said when I first started blogging. Will it encourage you more to see my kitchen "all dressed up for company" or as it is now, as it progresses through all the problems we have been having? I know I feel more comfortable when people are real and I can see their human frailties.
So, here goes........kitchen in progress.....

The first picture is our son-in-law hooking up the wiring for the oven and my husband, steadying the oven on the saw horses, giving advice, holding tools and shining some light in the dark oven hole. This is after they lugged the few hundred pound oven in from the bed of the truck, up several stone and wood steps and into the living room where they sat it on the floor. Sorry, no pictures of that. I was praying really hard and moving things out of the way at that time. The first clue I had that they were in the house were the manly grunts as the two of them carried the thing! Once it was on the floor I pulled tape off inside and outside of the oven and took out some of the things packed in it, while the guys figured out some wiring problems and called a few people. I was, at this point, getting pretty excited and thanking the Lord that neither of them (or the oven) were hurt!

The men regretted having put the oven on the floor when they realized how hard it was going to be to pick it up off the carpet! They sort of jacked it up by putting wood under it so it was at a better height to get their hands under and lift it while bent over. More prayers. More grunts. Quicker trip.

The oven and the men made it safely to the saw horses in the kitchen in front of the oven hole. It did not take long and the oven was installed, the breaker switched back on and everything seemed to work.

But neither did  it take long for them to discover that the oven would not fit into the hole! The cabinet was not deep enough.

The second picture is taken from the side showing how short it is from fitting all the way into the hole and the space on top.

The last picture shows the oven from the front. And in both pictures you can see the residue from the tape that was used to protect the finish on the stove.

It is usable as is, once we get the sticky, gray stuff off the stainless steel part. So, it is workable and beautiful even though it looks bad sticking out like it does.

My kitchen is very small. It became even smaller with the addition of the wall oven since it is sticking out. The rest of the kitchen became smaller also when precious floor space was used up when the needed shelf unit for the pantry items that were in our oven hole for a quarter of a century was set up.

I think it will be cute once all the problems get worked out. Still small, but cute!

I am disappointed that it all did not go well. I was discouraged that it has taken so long and yet still is not finished. I shudder to think about how long it could take until everything looks nice, as I picture it.

Certainly there are lessons to be learned from this minor trial.

I am reminded of the saying about being patient with each other because God is not done with us yet.  And we are not done with our kitchen yet. We are not shiny and perfect----and neither is our kitchen. But it is workable and that needs to be the focus. We are thankful for it despite the problems.

While I was trying to remove the gooey tape residue last night and again this morning I reflected on our human condition. I thought about how hard it is to remove the residue of the things that we think hold us together. The difficulty of removing from our minds what a godless society has taught us.  How our pretensions, the images we portray, what we do so that others will think well of us, are hard to rub off. It can be scary to be transparent, honest with each other. Not that I believe you have to give your whole life story to everyone or even every believer. But we certainly are to be more real with each other---imperfections and all. We need to learn how not to provoke others to covetousness or jealousy just as much as we need to guard ourselves from those things.

Just as we are to be real with other believers we ought to be even more transparent with God. I have always thought it was silly to not be totally honest with the Lord. He knows us better than we know ourselves, we cannot possibly hide from our Creator.  To try is foolishness. It is futile.

Since Adam fell and he and Eve tried to hide from God it has been the tendency of humans to do the same.
We are like little children who believe that because they put a blanket over their heads no one can see them. They can see no one, so no one must be able to see them. But God always sees us.

Seek God, read His Word, pray to the only One who can answer prayer. Keep Him always in your sight. He always sees you, make sure you always "see" Him.

Goodnight!
Kathi~