Is it haunted? What's up with the deserted toilet? What went on down there?
Everyone has that one place in their house that always has the door closed. Today, we take a little adventure.
“God doesn't test your faithfulness, without proving His own."
Why the basement?
This is the part of our conversation that you take an awkward sip of your coffee trying to avoid eye contact because you may be thinking, “Ok Emma, if this space is so undesirable, why are you talking about it? And WHY is it the second space in your home you're blogging about??” Well, good question…
When things aren't going the way you hoped
I heard on the radio this weekend that “God doesn’t test your faithfulness, without sharing his own.” Friend, I tell you, I heard this at the right time. To be honest, I have felt incredibly discouraged lately. I know this is to be expected when launching a new business. You pour everything you have into something so important and when you don't receive the results you hoped for, it is so defeating. Well I was thinking through this, and as I was sulking in self-pity on our couch, I heard a rush of water. Last I checked, we didn’t have one of those fancy water features in our home. What was it?? I checked everywhere in the house and finally…you guessed it, I looked in the basement.
Y'all, our basement was completely flooded. I will spare you the gritty details, but basically - I felt completely overwhelmed. I was just trying to sulk right? And now, I was interrupted by this pool of gunk all over our basement floor. I was so ready to just throw up my hands and say, welp we can’t afford this. Not sure what’s going to happen, our house is going to be completely useless. We are going to end up homeless since we won't be able to fix this cause, there's no way we can afford to replace this plumbing….Yes, I know how ridiculous this sounds, but I went on a complete stress-tangent of worst-case scenarios, creating my pessimistic, faithless, full-of-despair, outlook on the situation.
“One mop-full at a time, I soaked up the last of the water on our dirty, nasty, concrete floor."
I realized this was a situation in which I could either give up, or do something. What happened next? We picked up our 5 gallon bucket and started to remove the water. One mop-full at a time, I soaked up the last of the water on our dirty, nasty, concrete floor. A plumber was available first thing the next morning and fixed our problem at a cost that was so much lower than we expected. Wow…that doesn’t sound so bad after all. I know this sounds so trivial, and we should be thankful this is even something we have to deal with, #firstworldproblems. But, considering all the other things going on in life, this brought me to my knees.
Whether it's a flooded basement, discouraging endeavor, broken car, heart, family, or whatever else you may be going through, I tell you, as a ridiculously broken, desperate, and imperfect girl - it will be ok. There have been countless times in my life when I had no idea how I would see the other side of a dark situation. I tried to take control of the situation and finally found I literally had no choice but to pray that the Lord would help me through. Guess what? He has rescued me every time. It's definitely not always in my timing. But, without a doubt, He proves that His plans for me are under control, and they aren't my plans, they are His. I need to release my grip and realize that His plans are to prosper me, they are to protect me, He gives me hope for the future.
I acknowledge this really doesn't have much of anything to do with greeting cards, but I hope that it provides a form of encouragement. After all, that is why I started this business, to spread encouragement and tangible acts of kindness. I have no idea what my future holds, I have no idea what the future of Bungalow House Studio holds, but the Lord does. He sees past this unknown, He sees the light at the end of my tunnel and the light at the end of yours.