God in the Dishwasher

^A picture of part of the holey kitchen and a toddler who keeps tipping over those trash cans

If you ask me what I needed the least with 20-month-old twins, my answer would have been a home renovation. I can think of other things that would be worse, but a home renovation would definitely be in the top five. But as a fellow human you know about those times life presents us with something hard that makes us want to shout back, no I cannot handle that right now, and proceeds to give it to us anyway despite our protests.

So it was that in February, our dishwasher motor sprung a small leak. The kind that goes for weeks without any indication it’s there, silent and menacing, and soaks your dry wall and your subfloors until they buckle and requires those emergency companies that bring in massively huge and loud fans and dehumidifiers and tear up parts of your house right before your eyes and sprays for mold. Then, after you’ve register what has become of your kitchen, you play tug of war with your insurance company on how to put it back together again. Much like being heavily pregnant, you have a distant hope that things will turn out great but also a slight fear that you’ll be in this state forever.

We decided to do it all after school got out, and live at our camp while the work got done. For the most part, we worked around the holes in our daily life, and other than having to move the trash cans so the twins didn’t dump them over and having to switch the photo shoot with the magazine I am a food columnist for to another kitchen, we survived. Turns out you can make spring pea and mint raviolis in any kitchen.

Still only 73% sure it would ever happen, we began to plan the kitchen remodel. We found a company that can reface our existing cabinets and rebuild the ones that were gutted at half the price of getting new ones and fit into our budget from the insurance company. We watched happily when the flooring company replace the wood that was ripped out so we could stop stubbing our toes where the planks were missing. We’re moving a few things around, and it’s mostly a face lift, but it’ll become the clean, well-lit space that we’ve always wanted. Even if I didn’t want it precisely right now.

Because all of our floors were being redone, we had to book movers to take out ALL of our belongings from the first floor. We scheduled them for July 2nd. The date loomed larger on the calendar as school ended, mostly because it was harder to pack with my big kids than it was because of toddler twins, a fact I hadn’t considered and did not handle well at all. Then there were the loving people who were scared for me. I must have had eight conversations with friends and family that went like this:

Them: You have to take out everything? Me: Yup.

Them: Really? Even the fridge and the stove? Me: Yes, everything.

Them: Even the pantry shelves? Me: Yes, the pantry shelves stand on the floor they need to refinish. Ergo…

By the middle of June, I was having heart palpitations at the thought of having to pack up everything (everything? Yes everything) over the next two weeks, including the pantry, fridge, freezer and those clutter corners of our home that had grown since we had twins. I was simultaneously terrified but also ashamed of my stress and panic since it would all be ok. Our kitchen and floors will end up beautiful! At least we can go to the lake while it all got done! Still the amount of work paralyzed me. The kitchen is like the heartbeat of a family and it felt a bit like open heart surgery on our home.

I generally like to operate with a pretty strong center of peace, and I disliked that I was losing mine. Especially when I was interrupted from my goal of packing while toddlers slept by fighting grade schoolers. But where I erred was in thinking that something like a leak in the dishwasher, and the stress of a renovation, is something outside God’s domain. That something so earthly and busy and has so many pragmatics is in the material realm isn’t the stuff of God. But he wants all of us, including our stress and holey kitchens and leaky dishwashers, so he can give us good things. When the tsunami of life’s anxiety hits, he’s waiting in it. For us to attend to him, instead of it.

When I remembered this, my perspective changed. Those little people keeping me from my work were who all of this was for. Because God wants to give them good things too.

I focused just on what I could do each day to dismantle our busy house, and surprise, rediscovered that staying in the present brings peace. I also realized how therapeutic it can be to scrub out the molasses from the upper cupboard shelf and the melted popsicle in the bottom of the freezer. To sweep up the mess that’s been living under the couch since you last looked for the remote in 2017. I stopped dreading the amount of work and instead embraced things moving from the realm of chaos into order. I had watched the Konmarie show on Netflix like the rest of the world and really wanted to do what they were doing but I didn’t ever think I had the time. Well guess what a leak in your dishwasher will give you? FORCED Konmari-ing. Which ends up feeling pretty liberating.

On moving day, my husband took all the kids up north, and I worked with the movers all day to clean out everything (everything?) even the pantry shelves. As a food writer and blogger I am quite devoted to these pantry shelves, and I often write about the benefits of a well-stocked pantry for easy meal planning. There are no benefits to a well-stocked pantry when it comes to moving, however.

As much as I resisted having to do it, when it was happening there was such a sense of relief that these messes were leaving us, being dealt with, that they would be replaced with order and calm. When we move back in at the end of July, there will be shiny floors and a bright kitchen. As I was cleaning, I had this nagging feeling that God wanted this all for us even if I didn’t want it myself right now. And not just the shiny kitchen. He wanted me to be forced to clean up the messes. And while I’m sure there’s a metaphor there about how he wants to do this to our souls, to scour out grime and filth and leave beauty and order, I had the distinct sense that he wanted this for our physical space too.

After almost 10 hours of hauling and cleaning and pitching, I pulled away from the empty rooms, and drove up to the lake house with six sleeping children and a husband holding a cold beer for me, my heart overflowing with gratitude for all these gifts he keeps giving us. I’ll return in a few weeks and help the movers put everything back, but in the meantime we’re enjoying slow summer time with each other, which God probably knew we needed too. And when I go back to set up the home he’s so generously given to us, he’ll be right there in the middle of all of it, and I’ll keep telling him thank you.