It's June.
Cautiously working our way clear of the children's 24 hour bout with sickness following our weekend away, yesterday was spent tackling some projects around the house. A quick trip was arranged to the Rollinsford homestead to fill the bed of the pickup with a load of well-seasoned manure compost for Becca's use in the garden beds. Some lilacs were removed to make room in the yard for a long-requested play structure of some kind. And, a new compost box was constructed so that the existing site could be relocated.
Considering the old compost box over the past couple of days, I find that it has become an indictment and shame to me, indicative of a hard heart-posture that I have for too long allowed to define my marriage. Strange to say, perhaps, but it's true.
The first box was built in anger, out of pure spite some years ago, and looked every inch like it. In the mad dash of purchasing, gutting, rebuilding a 150 year-old home, and moving - while, not to mention, church planting - in the Spring of 2014, crafting a receptacle for our family's meager composting efforts simply did not register within my field of concern. This was not a project that I cared to be troubled with. With everything else in the mix at the time, if and when I EVER got around to that job would be soon enough. As far as I was concerned, this disregard was simply an act of triage; so small a thing, reasonable to ignore.
But what was missed in this particular calculus was any appreciation or deference to the fact that this was a project which DID, in fact, matter to my wife. According to a lens and value structure foreign to my own, in her economy of house and home and the task of establishing ourselves in this new place, it was of importance to her that the question of composting receptacle be addressed. A silly thing, perhaps. I certainly thought so, at the time. But the thing that was NOT silly or inconsequential was the way in which I allowed my own biases and values in the matter to justify the disregard, and even disdain, with which I treated my wife's request.
Suffice it to say, it should surprise no one that she brought the matter up a number of times over some weeks, because it mattered to her. And I, each time, would proceed to mock, ignore or disparage the request, because it did NOT matter to me. My values and concerns would not yield to consider - or even truly HEAR - the request my wife was making. I was rational. I was right. SHE was unreasonable, and needed to repent of badgering me so.
Oh, to fail to have shown love, in so simple a thing!
In the end, I acquiesced to her plea in a work of loveless spite; a piece of construction without care, effort, or genuine consideration of any kind. No consideration, that is, apart from the desire to cast its completion in her face as an act of vengeful frustration. The end result was as ugly as one might expect; ugly, even, for a receptacle for decaying food scraps.
As we pondered and prepared for its replacement yesterday, looking upon that old box shamed me. The words of our recent torrent echoed in its ugliness, forcing me to hear and consider them even yet more deeply. But yesterday, that old compost box was torn down and thrown to the fire. Yesterday, we built something new. Just a compost box, but born as a work of redemption and healing, bearing forth in the smallest of things.