Transparent Christian Magazine

Scrapwood. Garbage. Waste of space. Those are just a FEW of the names I had used to refer to an object that has hosted more overgrown grass and weeds than Woodstock.

We had first laid eyes on it about 4 years ago, when we were preparing our homesite. It was set out for the garbage, and my wife just HAD to have it! Old, broken, badly weathered, and deserving of its place by the curb, but somehow it found its way into the back of my pickup, on its way to yet another resting place.
It has been on this property for at least 4 years. That’s four seasons of moving it weekly to cut the grass, and when it snowed in the winter, it’s disfigured shape stood out like a frozen Quasimodo awaiting an Esmerelda in quiet solace.

This past spring my wife asked me what it would take to fix it up right. When I suggested a one-way ticket to the burn pile, I got a moment of silence that lasted all day. Finally, that evening before sundown, I wandered out to have a closer look. After about 15 minutes of inspection, I returned.

“Well?” asked my wife.

“Going to have to replace every single piece of hardware on that thing. I have no idea how much it may have rotted, and there’s no guarantee that it will turn out halfway decent. Besides, you already have so many of those things around here. There’s one on every side of the house!”

She replied,”Well, now there will be just one more. Besides, it reminds me of Donna!”

Right then and there I KNEW I had lost. My wife’s long-time friend had passed away that year, very suddenly with pancreatic cancer. It was a terrible and devastating loss, and my wife was still fragile over it. “OK, we will head over to the Depot tomorrow and get what I think it needs.”

I think she slept in her clothes, because when I woke up she was dressed and ready to go. I asked her “What’s the big deal? It’s just an old worn-out bench!”

That’s right… an old wooden bench that has probably spent more of its life as a bench than it did as a tree. But I digress.

Normally, on trips like this, my wife and I usually split to hunt down our interests. Not this time, though; she was right there, helping me pick out - and eventually trade for a different one - every nut, bolt and washer.

“Why do we have to use these? They’re so… so GRAY.”

“They’re BOLTS. That’s what they DO.”

“Don’t they make decorator bolts or something more fancy?”

“They do, but I’m pretty sure the marine store is closed today…”

At the marine store, we laid out the money for chrome-over-brass carriage bolts and nuts with nylon stops. Stainless Steel Screws and every other Sow’s Ear accessory you could think of. On our way back to the truck she literally BOUNCED with excitement, saying, “It’s gonna be so PRETTY!”

I grunted.

Well, right after that, I got hurt in a work accident…bad, in fact. It has been 6 months now, and I am not better. I feel like so much of my life was TAKEN from me. I feel old, broken, badly weathered, and deserving of a place out by the curb. Slowly but surely losing my motivation, my purpose, and worst of all, my HOPE, I find that I can’t work on the mower, because I can’t get up or down from the ground; can’t work as a driver because of permanent restrictions placed by the doctor; can’t stand on my feet for more than an hour because the knee now has no viable means of support. More about that in a future article…

After months of cajoling, and near infinite patience, my wife finally Told Me To Fix The Bench. Didn’t ask, didn’t suggest, but gave me a direct order. Now, I didn’t want to stand, kneel, stoop or whatever it took to work on that stupid bench, so it was an order I disobeyed… I was playing my passive aggressive card to the hilt, but she knew it. She even mentioned Donna again… but I was holding my ground. Then one day, she said, “Don’t you feel silly having all that expensive hardware around, with nothing to use it on?”

She knows that no guy likes to see stuff hanging around his shop that represents the “what I shoulda done” projects. This bench, if I didn’t fix it, was going to become an “I shoulda dunnit” for sure.

So this past weekend, I started. It was hot, I was sweaty, and could only pull off a couple hours at a time, but slowly I went about dismantling this monstrosity. I saw rot all over the place, and spent a good deal of time copying entire pieces as replacements for those pieces that were too far gone. I wound up replacing almost half of the wood in that bench.

As I entered the reassembly part of the project, I noticed a change start to take place. I could stand back, look at that bench, and see the potential. I worked at it some more, adding a couple of design improvements and additional bracing to make it last longer. I made sure the new pieces matched the rest of the bench. I was bound and determined, if I was going to do all this work on this bench, it was going to be BETTER when I was done.

Then it hit me: I was that bench.

I was the one lying in a useless lump in the middle of my home. Nothing to look at, no real purpose… by the world’s standard, I was sure that I had outlived my usefulness and I was too old to be taught new tricks. I WAS that bench!

And yet, here I was, looking at the near-finished product, and realizing that just as my wife saw the potential in that little worn-out bench, GOD saw a greater purpose in me than the broken-down lump I’d been feeling like. And where she saw the need to make even the hardware better, so He is using little things to make MY LIFE better

The bench isn’t quite done, and won’t be for a few days because of the rain. But I see it for what it will be, and it makes me feel good to look at it.

I hope when God looks at me, He feels the same way.