Spiritual Lessons of Remodeling

CREATING THE VISION, AND KNOWING IT WON\’T BE PERFECT

Perhaps this is a little late in the process, but as I sit here in my bedroom, hunkered down with my cats, loud power tools – very loud power tools – buzzing and vibrating right outside of the door .. I thought this would be the appropriate time to start some blog posts on \’The Spiritual Lessons of Remodeling.\”

Okay, I know you must be saying, \”There is nothing spiritual about remodeling.\” This is especially true if you\’ve ever been through one. But if you have been through one, you also know what a challenging experience it is, and if we are not learning our spiritual lessons from the challenges in our lives, where are we learning them?

I only wish that I had some insight before I started this journey, to know what to expect. If there\’s one thing I\’m understanding today, now that I am seeing the pantry is way bigger than I envisioned, and the counter way smaller, is that we tend to fall into the idea that since we are making the decisions and doing it \’our way\’, it will be perfect. Remodeling tip #1. It will not.

The spiritual lesson here is acceptance. The entirety of your remodel is not going to be perfect, just as the entirety of your life is not perfect. You designed your new kitchen (or bathroom, or living room or whatever) just as you designed your life.

But as we look at our lives we can choose to focus on the points that aren\’t perfect, and obsess about how this little thing about our job or our spouse or our social life is not perfect, or we can choose to look at the things that are.

We make mistakes. We make decisions we regret that can\’t be changed …. windows and doors can\’t be returned once ordered, cabinets can\’t be made smaller once the doors are ordered (unless you have a heck of a lot of money and don\’t care how many more weeks your refrigerator will be sitting in the living room…), just like we can\’t go back to a relationship we left or a house we sold. You can never go back. And even if you did, it would never be the same. The best we can do is visualize how we see the remodel of our lives, and know that not everything is going to be perfect, no matter how hard we try. Some things we catch in time, other things we don\’t.

For those things we don\’t, we learn lessons. In shamanic terms, if I were to look at my pantry as a symbol, I can look at it as it\’s taking up too much space and looks odd. OTOH, if I look at food as a symbol of knowledge, then there is just that much more capacity to store all of the things that I\’ve yet to learn in my life, and a place where I can store all of the blessings that I know I have in my life, so that when the noise gets a little too loud,and the walls shake a little too much, I know right where to go to open the pantry and count my blessings.

Remodeling Tip:
— You may have designed it, it doesn\’t mean it will be perfect. Don\’t expect it to be.
Lesson:
— Accept the things that can no longer be changed. Focus on the things that did turn out right. Look at the beauty in the \’right\’ decisions.