"When it comes to quality, we dig deep"

Oh, have I been meaning to get here!  The house is a mess, the dishes pile higher and higher, the only moment to finish laundry was around 1:30am, my bed hasn't been made in days. And I beg the world to slow down, and it only seems to speed up, and it kind of literally did when we lost that hour. 

But this week, this week we're going to slow it down a little, we're gonna live a little more outside of time, live a little more in the moments and less bound by the ticking of the clock.

March is a pretty big month for me.  Two extremely significant things occur.  One: Lent, Palm Sunday, Easter.  In some ways it almost feels bigger to me than Christmas.  We spend more time getting ready, making room in our hearts, giving things up to enter into Christ's sufferings, preparing our hearts to be warmed by the amazing love and unfailing grace.  Two: my birthday falls the day before Palm Sunday.  As a highly reflective and contemplative person this makes for an extremely intense month of self evaluation and expectation. I reflect over the past year and prepare for the next year of life. Let's just say its a LOT! and leave it at that. 

I appreciate symbols, art, and stories because they seem to be able to communicate abstract concepts that our minds are conscious of but have difficulty grasping. 

At various times in my life I've felt like a building.  Not very far from my house is an active construction site.  Almost daily I pass by and observe and reflect on the parallels to my own life.  I'm coming through a long season of demolition, of reworking thought patterns learned since childhood.  With a highly analytical and critical brain I often feel like I never make it passed the tearing down and demolition phase.  But I feel like I'm finally emerging from a major one: "saying NO to abandonment, and being a victim of it." And as I watch this construction site I'm struck by several things:
(1) There is a sign with the construction company's slogan plastered on it: "When it comes to quality, we dig deep". Over the last few months I have taken hope in this phrase as if an affirmation from Christ himself.
(2) After you destroy everything you dig a really, really big hole.  You dig down before you can dig up.  Ironically, I recently read a devotional about this very truth in Thoughts that Make Your heart sing by Salley Lloyd-Jones (the lady who wrote the Jesus Story Book Bible). 
(3) Before you can pour the concrete you put what appear to be, molds in place, the temporary before the solid.  Its a process. A long one at that. 
(4) And after this long and not very visually exciting process of digging a large hole and a foundation that no one really sees, but changes everything, and is either going to make or break the entire structure, the walls go up. All of a sudden.  Just like that. It starts taking shape. In an instant.

And the lumber smells so fresh, like life, like growth, like hope, like newness. And it will be a while before this building is complete.  But the change, the transformation is amazing and only now am I beginning to see it.  And as I sift through the past few years, I can't believe the changes that have been made in my own life, the growth, the demolition, the digging of a very deep hole, the warmth of my cocoon. And I can't believe we're here all of a sudden. So I'm begging time to slow down, so that I can relish my last few weeks in my warm cocoon before the next phase of transformation.  And all I can do is give thanks and say that God has been very faithful to me, and that I know He will continue to be.