I spent a good part of a very hot June day on the back patio of our house cutting in paint around edges, doorframes, electrical boxes, natural gas and other various pipes and conduit housing all kinds of hoses and wires that make our household run. I moved and climbed up and down the ladders of different heights to get to all the angles. There was very little breeze. I was sweaty and it was buggy. Sounds awful, but it had to be done.

Painting our house is toward the end of a very long list of projects we’ve undertaken on our little farm over the course of a year and a half. The first was a no-brainer—replacing the tractor shed. 

The old shed was held together by a wing and a prayer. It sat at the bottom of an ancient decaying retaining wall made of enormous creosote-soaked railroad ties that over many years of gravity having its way had bulged out to an alarming degree. 

Before we took ownership of this farm someone had haphazardly pounded in T-posts up against the wall to, hopefully, hold back the weighty railroad ties. A vain attempt to stave off the inevitable collapse which would in turn take down the aged shed and by extension destroy the very necessary tractor and other farm implements.

We had conversations with our contractor friend, one of the best men on the planet, and we made decisions. That was last spring. It’s now summer a year later and after copious delays involving permits, materials, and inclement weather our tractor shed, now affectionately known as ‘The Castle’ is complete. 

The Castle is a stellar building and will undoubtedly outlast everything on this property. It boasts a formidable concrete foundation alongside a completely new and well engineered retaining wall. It’s well built, good looking, and highly functional. 

The Castle is so nice that suddenly everything else has started to look a little worn. Before the fresh new coat of paint, Bear Cub Brown, aww, was applied to the Castle I never thought our house was in need of painting. I didn’t realize how shabby the faded green had become. That’s why I’m out here today all paint smudged, sticky, sweaty and buggy. 

I think it’s the case that in the dailiness of life I become used to certain things until something happens to shake up my awareness and then suddenly I can’t see anything else. Like the big cardboard box that has been sitting in our dining room for weeks. 

We have a relatively small house so a large cardboard box occupying some precious, in-your-face real estate should have probably gotten my attention. The box holds tubs that I am going to use for storage in our pole barn. While that project is still months away the box has remained where it landed when it came into our house off the Costco truck. 

“Why, I ask myself, is the box still in our dining room where I have been walking by it several times a day, for weeks?” “Because,” as a climber answers when asked why he or she is driven to the mountaintop … “It is there.”

It is there. That’s the best answer I’ve got. Another case of simply getting used to something. It can be awkward, in your way, something placed somewhere before you ever took possession of your home. It can be broken down, shabby and certainly doesn’t have to make sense … it’s just there. 

The box did get moved this morning when I needed some kind of surface to put my paint tray and brushes on while painting. Something that wouldn’t get damaged if I got sloppy, which I always do. It’s a big cardboard box. A perfect table. I hauled it to the patio and hopefully it, and its contents will find a final resting place in our pole barn loft in a couple of days when the painting is complete, and not of course remain where it now sits.

I wonder how long that box would have sat in our dining room if I hadn’t needed something just that size. How many things, ideas, pursuits have I become accustomed to and mindlessly accepted just because one way or another they landed in a certain place in my life.

How to wake up? Am I at the mercy of external circumstances or the fates shaking me into awareness? Must I have to stumble upon something as if bumbling around in the dark to truly see what’s in front of me. Or, could I consciously find a way to discover the cracks and crevices in my blind acceptance and complacency … how can we see our shadows and blindspots? 

Further, when examining the circumstances of my life, where is the line between dogged perseverance and embracing the way it is? There’s a hint in the last line of the serenity prayer (paraphrased to accommodate my spirituality).

May I have the grace to accept the things I cannot change … the courage to change the things I can … and the wisdom to know the difference.