Beauty Under Pressure
How drywall, grief, and Psalm 61 reminded me that God can bring redemption from the messiest places.
The month of May was full. I spent a lot of time watching videos and getting schooled in the fine art of drywall, mudding, and taping at what I jokingly call the University of YouTube. I thought I was doing a pretty darn good job, too—until my wonderful cousin came to help me with the final sanding and texture in June. But we’ll get back to that.
I realized during that season that I had been using my home remodel project as a way to avoid and protect myself from feelings I didn’t know what to do with: uncertainty about the future, the unknown of where my life was going, loneliness, and sometimes despair. It worked for a while. I could hide inside the project, behind the dust and drywall and tasks that always needed doing.
Then came the news that my Aunt Shila’s husband, Frank, had passed away, and everything in me stopped.
When Shila and Frank got married, I was still in high school. They lived hours away, and Frank was a truck driver, so I hadn’t gotten to know him very well back then. I knew he was funny. I knew he always had a story to tell. But a little more than fifteen years before his passing, Frank had an accident and broke his neck. During his initial recovery, I was blessed to help give my aunt a little relief on weekends, along with Frank’s daughter Julie, at the rehab hospital.
One of my favorite memories from that time is Julie and me sneaking him “contraband” from the nearby coffee shop. But even more than that, I remember watching him fight for every ounce of movement he could muster in all his physical and occupational therapy appointments. I watched him improve week after week, without fail. I also remember the quiet moments when a tear would fall down his cheek.
Frank fought with every ounce of his being to be there for his children and for my aunt. He walked again. He lived a full life. He loved his family with his whole heart. What a beautiful love story—and a story marked by redemption and courage the whole way through.
I hate to admit it, but I didn’t have the capacity to handle that grief on top of my own chaotic life. It stirred up the whole rat’s nest of everything in my world. One of my deep regrets from that time is that I was not there for my aunt the way I wish I could have been. On one occasion, I even added to her plate. I am so blessed by her forgiveness and mercy in her own time of trial. Oh, how our humanity can get in the way at the worst possible moments.
Maybe I’ve mentioned before that I have been doing a Bible in a Year study. Not long after coming home from Frank’s celebration of life, the study led me to Psalm 61. Verses 1 through 4 spoke directly to the faint places in my heart:
“Hear my cry, O God, listen to my prayer; from the end of the earth I call upon you when my heart is faint. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I, for you have been my refuge, a strong tower against the enemy. Let me dwell in your tent forever! Let me take refuge under the shelter of your wings!”
When life doesn’t make sense, when it feels like too much to bear, when it seems like real love will never find you, or when the pressure and chaos have no meaning, this is what my faith tells me: God knows what is happening, and He is not surprised. Not at all. And He is right there with you, waiting for you to lean on Him.
And somehow, there is redemption. There is beauty from ashes. If you can’t follow me all the way there because you haven’t come to that same belief, let me say it another way: a diamond begins as ordinary carbon, pressed under extreme pressure and heat. I can say without a doubt that every trial I have walked through, healed from, and found my way beyond has revealed beauty far beyond what I could have imagined.
That is what I saw at the end of May when I looked at my house project. It had begun where the ceiling was open, insulation was hanging on for dear life, rafters were sagging, and the weight of the roof seemed too much to bear. And yet, there is redemption. There is support. There is re-insulating—maybe we can call that recalibrating in life. There is new drywall—maybe we can call that reorganization in life. And soon, there will be paint—the new way we look at life, or maybe the new way life begins to look to us.
What is this glorious life if not the process of being honed and reshaped into something stronger, steadier, and more beautiful than before?
What a gift.
I’ve used this before, but this feels like a fitting place to repeat it:
“‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’” Jeremiah 29:11