Throwback: Thresholds
(reposted from February 10, 2017 @restorationfamily.wordpress)
We have struggled with TRANSITIONS this {school} year. They have been rough, I won’t lie. I kept thinking we would get our act together but I’m pretty sure it’s February and we still don’t have it together! There’s something in the change that has caught us up. We keep looking back. Its making it hard to move forward.
There are several-6-spots in the house {currently} that don’t have proper transitions. They need another piece of the puzzle to be complete. We completed the kitchen floors before moving in-we had to install the cabinets after all and decided we wanted to run the flooring all the way. So we left the thresholds knowing we could get to them…four years later and they have not been got! Two look like they are in but need quarterround and to be cut down and secured into place. Two are just unfinished!
It’s easy to look finished. We have the schedule in place and get everything turned in on time, but its not a smooth transition from afterschool to dinner to bed to wake up to school. Everyday has a new challenge and alternate routine. We need an anchor-a constant-a grounding. Something to nail us down.
We have been in transition all year. From one activity to the next, one season to the next, one month to the next, one travel to the next. We live our lives in the chunks of time in TRANSIT to the next and in TRANSITION between two; influx of family time or holding down the fort.
The upstairs bathroom work was a quick progression that we needed to keep rolling so the transitions were just left for a later date. When we could pull out that other tool and take the time to cut a straight line or until the new extra wide threshold was ordered. Now it needs to be cut, stained, placed. (The closet threshold is holding up the inside trim too-oy!)
These thresholds haven’t halted the function of anything. They are still flooring, still supporting-no big holes to the basement or joists. They expose our subfloor. Our baselayer. That gritty underneath of the shiny pretty details that come together as the design.
{Sigh}
Threshold
thresh·old [ˈTHreSHˌ(h)ōld] NOUN
a strip of wood, metal, or stone forming the bottom of a doorway and crossed in entering a house or room.
synonyms:doorstep · doorway · entrance · entry · door · gate · gateway · portal
the magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded for a certain reaction, phenomenon, result, or condition to occur or be manifested.
Do you see it too? Our TRANSITions: the beginnings, what we are the verge of with each week. The magnitude of our actions. I have tripped over my THRESHOLD, stumbling just as the baby constantly untethers the kitchen one. I have hit wall after wall of will power this year with solo parenting and running EVERYthing. But I HAVE to cross over. I have to CROSS over in order to enter HIS grace. I have to cross OVER in order to gather up that strength HE is offering me. I have to TRANSITION out of this state to receive HIS grace.
It’s there. Staring at me each time I walk into another room; into the closet, into the bathroom, into the kitchen. He is beckoning me. Come here, CROSS over. It’s not easy to transition. It requires movement: transit. and change. No one wants change. We get comfortable with the way things are. Safe and secure feeling. Brink… Cusp these sound like standing on the edge of a precipice. I have felt that this year. Like I was standing on a tightrope between the solid schedule we used to maintain and the future that I can’t see for the fog. And He beckons me. Keep CROSSing. Follow my voice, you are almost there. My Threshold is wide, too wide for my liking. And my transition is not Finished. It may NEVER be FINISHED.
