As most of you know by now, my family moved into a very old and much-loved home a year ago. The home is beautiful and we love it so much; but it sure is a heck a lot of work! It seems like each week, I am starting a new project in a somewhat futile attempt to make it my own. This week, in an attempt to distract myself from several bad days that come along with having a complicated family, I decided to strip the many layers of paint off our front doors and bring back the original wood.
What I thought would be a simple task, proved to be extremely tedious and exhausting. Things are never quite as simple as they seem. As I was standing there, biceps bulging from hours of stripping away layer after layer of paint, sweat dripping down my brow, I couldn’t help but think of my family and our lives. Just like the doors of a nearly 100-year old house, the time has come for us too to strip away what we’ve used as cover -up and get back to what we originally loved.
Just like the home that sits at 209 Oak Street, a family is beautiful from the street, but is made of a million complicated and intricate parts on the inside. Over the years, we see things that we want to change/improve on. After looking at the same thing year after year, we start to grow bored and spot little things that can be “better”. We start to feel like what worked so easily before is now not good enough and want to switch things up. So, we throw a fresh coat of “paint” over the original.
At first, the change is welcomed. We are refreshed, even delighted at seeing something new! We may even wander what we ever saw in the original to begin with. As the years go by, we may even forget altogether what the original actually looked like. And, who even really cares, right? Things are so much better now! Things are so much prettier now, so why bother even thinking back on how things were originally? Any little thing that wasn’t quite right to begin with is now covered up with something pretty.
Therein lies the problem. Over time, just like the layers of paint on those doors, every family will start to see some “peeling” and “cracking” and what was originally there will start peeking out. No matter how pretty things may seem from afar, the past will always peek through original. And this is when you have to make real decisions. Do you roll up your sleeves, gather materials and deal with the original woodwork and bring it back to its original glory? Do you just brush over the peeling with another coat of pretty paint and hope no one can see its imperfections? Or do you decide that it’s too much trouble to even bother with the original and just buy a whole new “door”.
What is the depreciated value of the original? Maybe the original family was so rare that it actually sees an appreciated value. As a family grows and thrives, these are decisions each family member will have to make at some point in time. Do you scrap the old and start with something new; or do you put in some elbow grease and scrape away years and years of “pretty” to bring back the original beauty?
My family is no different than any other family. Each is beautiful in its own special way. Each has multiple facets of love and laughter and hurt and pain. Each family has its strengths and weaknesses. Just like this old house, each family has a door or two that could use some work, but it always has something special that makes it “home” to its inhabitants.
I can tell you, that I have often passed by different homes and thought to myself ‘I wonder if that family is as crazy and messed up as mine?’ And though ya’ll may be crazy in a slightly different way than we are; and your scars may not be as deep as ours, I take comfort in knowing that everyone, at some point in a family’s history, has to take a time out, stop their daily lives, and make an emergency trip to the “hardware store”. Everyone has to strip the paint eventually. Just make sure you get the right tools and take careful steps to not cause any more damage to the original woodwork. Remember what you loved about it in the first place. Remember the joy it brought you years before. Remember what made it feel like home.
The world is crazy out there. We must make it better. And, we must start with the few doors in our own home.
Lessons Learned From The Rainbow 