Everyday at 8 AM, after I drop the kids off at school, I swing by our new house that is under construction. Lately, this has been my view of the front porch and the front walk. I have to carefully find my footing with each step forward. When I’m almost close enough to be inside, this is all I can see.
It looks like a war zone.
As I was leaving yesterday it occurred to me that once the house is finished and friends come to visit, no one will ever know that the lovely concrete they’re walking on, once looked like this. They won’t know that this rubble was the messy byproduct of the process to create the beautiful, smooth stucco exterior they see. They won’t see the seemingly endless hours of work by all the crews. They’ll never see the rubble that once existed where the beautiful house now stands, unless I show them. (Which I plan to do, I don’t ever want to forget it.)
Building is a journey.
Whether you’re building a house, a business, a career, marriage, a family or a friendship, it doesn’t matter. Building is hard. There will be rubble. There will be days you’ll wish you’d never started. There will be days you want to turn around and RUN the other way until you never have to see it again. There will be days you can’t go another step and you have to slump down in the middle of the rubble to rest, not knowing if you’ll ever have the strength to get back up. When you’re almost there, almost inside, this might be all you see.
It looks like rubble.
There’s nothing here that resembles the beautiful dream you have. It looks like war. It looks like nothing but work for days on end. It looks like it all fell apart.
But if you just keep going, you’ll get inside, where it actually resembles a home.
There are rooms, walls and cabinets. You can see the potential of what it could become. That’s where the magic happens. That’s where the new life you’ve been building and carrying inside is born. All of the rubble, all of the work, has been leading to this. There is hope. There is possibility.
You just have to journey through the rubble to see it.
Trust me, I speak from experience, this is true in every area of life.
The rubble comes first, and then the beauty.
The rubble is part of the process.
A beautiful house, a beautiful you, a beautiful life, is not possible without it.
Keep going, your beauty is building.
to more love,
Crystal
P.S. There are so many things bringing me joy right now, but one of the biggest is all the conversations happening around our next GNO. Only two weeks away! “Let’s Get Together” is all about beauty, so because it’s us, it will inevitably bring stories of journeying through the rubble. Join us. You’ll be glad you did.
