Before and After.

In keeping you updated, the other chair DID get done! And just in time for company this weekend. Huzzah!

Per usual, here are her "Before pictures":

She was something I acquired from a grandmother along the way. And what a lovely pink-ish, peach-ish, 70's-ish color she was....

But then I had to tear her apart...

So that's how they do it.

And, drum roll, please!

Hubbs even picked out the fabric himself for this one too!!

And just in case you were wondering, say, if you have never done a project like this, what the rest of your house looks like during an undertaking of massive proportions such as this, I have evidence.

The "duringmath"

Now, if you are the creative sort this picture will come as no shock to you. It is a sight you have seen before, no doubt.
But my apologies to you who do not do things like this and are insulted by how I let my house get while creating. If it is any consolation, here is how the living room usually looks, and how it looks now with my two, basically new chairs!

I suppose it's its own brand of "before and after."

And just another sweet shot of the wolf picture for all who wanted to see it. Because I am confident all of you wanted to see it.

Anywho, company is on the way, but I just wanted to do a little follow up to what I wrote in the last post about how there is something so wonderful and spiritual about Before and After pictures.

Really I think it's true.

So often I look at my life and see what the Lord and I still need to work on. I see all the areas where I fail, repeatedly. Where I hurt and disappoint and misunderstand those I love most; those who are my closest "neighbors" ( i.e. the ones I am supposed to "love as myself."). If you ask me, my soul looks more like the messy living room than the sweet new chair. It's easy to get discouraged or overwhelmed with how much needs to still be "remodeled" in the very core of me.

But when was the last time you took a look at your life, a long, hard, honest stare, and with an overwhelming thankfulness blessed the name of the Lord for what he has already done? Those areas where you most certainly are not as you were before you knew Christ.

I think about when it says in Philippians, "If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion...." and I always get lambasted with thoughts about when I DIDN'T have any encouragement, when there was no comfort because I had not his love; when I lived my life without the kind of fellowship that only the Spirit can bring, because it is a fellowship of reverence, while still being so known and kept so closely; I think about all those years I didn't have real compassion or any tenderness, because I did not know his compassion and tenderness....
That's what I think about when I see Before and After pictures and am, consequently, so thankful. For what other response can a change in you for the better that you yourself did not precipitate bring forth from the depths of you but thankfulness?
Thankfulness to the God of the universe who not only saw me in my lost estate...looking worse than any living room or any peach colored 70's era chair....., but chose me in my lost estate, all wrinkled and dirty and messy as I was, and said, "I can make something new out of you. Only I can turn your ashes to beauty."

And then he did.
And today he still does.

Thankfully.

Love you, Wolfies.
Happy Weekend.