Metaph(or) Mirror
I hopped back into the car, switched the hazards off, and reversed through the gate. After clearing the radius of the chain-link fence I put it in park, turned the key toward me, and glanced at the structure in the rear view. Things were in a surprisingly different state than when I left here five hours ago. Closing the driver’s side behind me, I double-checked my pockets before pressing the lock button twice. When I looked up, a familiar face held a sledgehammer, smiling and waving from the roof line with his one free hand. “Progress!” I shouted back to him over the noise with a thumbs up and a smile of my own.
On my better days this place seems like a metaphor, but sometimes it just feels like a mirror. The stucco skin had been brutalized weeks earlier probably with the same sledgehammer that was now pummeling the rafters. The insulation too was long since gone, disposed of, leaving only the framing in tact and exposed to the elements. I knew that the aim of all this was improvement, but at the moment it was only a growing mess and inconvenience.
Seeing that the makeshift front door was barricaded by a heap of old eaves, roofing tiles, and beams, I made my way around the back. I didn’t use this other entrance much, and the first key I tried wouldn’t turn the lock. I fumbled for my next best guess. About fifteen feet from me in the dirt which used to be a patio I noticed the increasingly worn pages of plans that lay unravelled like a scroll of sorts. The markings, measurements, notations, and numbers they contained weren’t a language I spoke with much service let alone eloquence. Slowly, though, I was getting the picture.
My second effort on the key chain got me in. Passing through the garage I noticed an unfamiliar draft spilling in where dry wall used to seal off the gaps between the rafters. “Collateral damage” I muttered to myself. I shut the door behind me but I still felt the cold draft of the last few days passing through my own rib cage unobstructed.
I wished I knew what was going on. This was hardly the first time I had been buffeted by the elements, and I was growing weary of the recurrence. From where I stood my own frame and its contents looked a lot like the chaos I just witnessed and was living in. I had been in a state of disrepair for as long as I could remember and the aggravating part was that it didn’t seem to be constructive of anything other than failure, embarrassment, offense, and apologies. After all this time I had no more guesses as to what on earth the Architect had drawn up on His pages, and I certainly did not understand His methods. Yet as I sat down at the kitchen table to eat my lunch, now beneath the incessant clanging of hammers, I couldn’t shake the thought that He was still invested in me, and I even started to believe again that His designs were good.