Have you ever had a moment in regular, every-day life that just hits a chord on something deeper? I do. And I did today.
See, in the new office there are beautiful, old wood floors ❤ But, they do need some TLC. There is one room where the floors were particularly bad. It looked like a huge rectangle of water damage along with lots and lots of dye on the wood. I have plans to sand and refinish the floors, some day. There are a lot of other things I need to do first. So, for now, I had bought some other flooring to just put over the stained floor. I was going to just hide it for now until I could fix it properly. I mean, I had already bought the new flooring last night!
Today I was painting on the wall above this floor and some of the dye smeared with the paint. Hmmm . . it wasn’t completely set in the wall. So I sprayed some cleaner on the floor and a lot of the dye started to come up! And, that spot that I thought was a large water-damaged rectangle? It isn’t water damaged at all! It is just layers and layers of dye!
I looked around the room and saw where it looked like someone else may have tried to mop the floor at a different time, and the dye was smeared around the floor. Hmmm.
A friend stopped by and tried a Mr Clean Eraser. That took off even more dye! It was working! I don’t need to cover the floor right now! I mean, it isn’t show-room new. But it is getting a LOT better than it was. I just need to work on it quite a bit more!!
And I thought about how this is true in life. How often do we give up on something and go for the easy fix because we think we know best? How often do we just reach for the first thing to try to fix a problem and then give up when some of the bad stuff smears around a little? How often do we appreciate what hard work and the right tools can do, even when it doesn’t fix a problem back to 100%? How often are we tickled with the repaired problem, knowing we didn’t have to hide it with a quick-fix? And how often do we want to do a quick-fix because the real solution is just too big for the time being . . when maybe there is a second best real solution that is better than hiding?
Tonight I am thankful for finding out that the wood floors are save-able without having to hide them!! And I am thankful for the reminder that life beyond wood floors sometimes needs a little more research and a little more hard work to be a good result that I can be proud of (just like my floors!)!
Momma's Silver Lining 