Trust the Process (and the Processor)
January 19, 2022 by Brent McCoy
My family and I recently acquired a couple of pieces of an old bowling lane. Weird, right? Anyway, stay with me. My wife wanted to use them to build a new table. The process for getting these pieces from where they were to where we could use them was not easy. The lane was in two separate pieces. One piece was a manageable 6 ft (ish) piece. The other was a monstrous 18 ft behemoth. In order to transport it, we had to use a chainsaw and a saws-all to cut it into 3 smaller pieces. We then had to load it onto 3 trucks to get to where we needed. When we got it home, it took some Herculean efforts to get it into the garage. There, the pieces sat gathering all manner of garage dust until the time was right.
Finally, the time came for the table to be built. The edges of the table needed sanded down with some COARSE sand paper. There were ares that were pretty rough. Once these were sanded down, the surface was then sanded down with a sander armed with sandpaper that was less coarse. There were also steel brackets that needed to have their ends cut off in order for this piece to function as a tabletop without chopping someone’s legs off at the thigh. This was accomplished using our versatile saws-all. (BTW, it’s called a saws-all because it LITERALLY SAWS ALL things…not kidding. These things are wild, dude.) After all this was done, it was time to refinish the surface. Once that was accomplished, the finish needed to dry, so the tabletop was left outside to bake in the sun.
Everything up to this point has been a little bit tricky…but nothing could prepare me for what was next.
In order to get this thing into my house, I had to rely on the help of two 12-year-olds and one 8-year-old who were unfortunate enough to find themselves unoccupied when it was time to carry this 400,000 ton hunk of wood into our home; through the laundry room, kitchen, dining room, and then into the family room, its final destination.After a smashed finger, some yelling, and an 8-year-old piloting a longboard through have the house while half of the tabletop rode long, we were able to get the table together in the room where it belonged.
It looks great and will serve its purpose well, but it wasn’t easy.
“But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.”
-Isaiah 64:8
The prophet, Isaiah, talks about the people of God being the work of His hands. This encompasses a lot. As God shapes us into the people we are to be, we may experience times in our lives that are uncomfortable (at best) and even painful (at worst). If you and I believe that we serve a God who is sovereign, then we must acknowledge that He is in control. We may not enjoy all aspects of the process, but we must believe that God will use the circumstances that we are in to form us into who He is calling us to be. Those times of reshaping may come in a variety of ways. For me, those times came in the form of job loss, sickness, hospitalization of family, criticism, loss of loved ones, and more.
I was reshaped by God during those experiences. I know that I am a better person for going through it all. I learned during these times to fully rely on God. He used these times to remind me of my dependence on Him. I don’t know what you may be dealing with now, but I can tell you to trust the process…and more importantly, trust the One in charge of the process.