A man was in the attic because he'd come to repair a few places in our roof that were leaking. Eli was out of town and I was across the compound at the time of the incident. I came home to find my son sobbing on the porch, our missionary friend trying in vain to comfort him. And then I walked in to see this:
After the incident, we lived with a hole in the ceiling for a while because it was December and getting work done around the holidays is always difficult. When we did finally get the ceiling repaired, the job wasn't done well. The plaster cracked sooner than later and bits of ceiling regularly fell down onto the living room carpet and furniture. Rather than try to get the repair job repaired, Eli covered the crack with clear packaging tape to prevent more of our ceiling from raining down on us anymore. Then we promptly moved on with our lives.
Our ceiling has looked like this for the past five years:
Some might ask, "Why wouldn't you bother fixing your ceiling at some point in the past several years of opportunity? Wouldn't it be a fairly simple thing to do, and wouldn't you rather live with a decent ceiling than dwell under one like that?"
Good questions.
The answer is twofold: 1) tackling any sort of housing project here is such a headache that it's usually not worth it, and 2) we long ago stopped caring about such trivial concerns because living with a house that's not somehow falling down around you is unheard of. A ceiling taped into place? Just another day in Kenya. It's truly been a trivial matter.
What does move us to immediate action? The day I walked into our bedroom to discover that termites had literally eaten through the concrete walls and were beginning to invade our bedroom, having already eaten away part of a bookmark that was sitting on my bedside table, with the actual book next in line. That is something requiring immediate action.
Cracks in the ceiling? Nah. They can stay that way for years with nary a second thought.
Well, last week our ceiling was finally repaired, but it wasn't because we sought to repair it. We had other, more pressing issues to deal with: repair jobs that were a long time coming but had finally reached a point of demanding attention.
A different ceiling in our house was literally falling apart at the seams and it was not a situation that could be fixed with tape. Moisture in our bathroom had slowly eroded the ceiling until it dissolved and broke apart. Tiles were falling off the walls, paint was peeling, and cracks in the exterior walls rained down daily dirt particles.
It was not a pretty sight. But once again we couldn't find the motivation or energy to care for a long time. House repair projects? We wouldn't go near them with a ten-foot pole. We know too many people with too many stories of projects gone wrong, projects that take a thousand times longer than they're supposed to, projects that begin but never end (literally), projects that seem to take away years of your life before they're done.
We had no interest in opening that Pandora's box.
Two things finally made us pull the plug: 1) our househelper urged us to fix the bathroom because she couldn't clean well in there with the ceiling and walls falling in around her, and 2) we returned from HMA to discover a wall in our classroom suffering from the moisture in the concrete, causing the paint to bubble profusely, dissolve, and fall onto the books below.
If there's one thing to make Mama Horn spring into action, it's a Book Rescue!
Between the two projects, we knew it was finally time to get some guys to come do the necessary repairs to the two rooms.
When they came to assess the situation, the maintenance guys immediately took notice of the taped ceiling in our living room that we had disregarded for the past five years. They looked at it and tsked. They declared, before even laying eyes on the actual projects they'd come to do, that they would fix the ceiling. They were unwilling to let such a ceiling exist in our house.
What we had ignored for years, they could not ignore. They added one more item to the list of everything they needed to accomplish in our house.
It was encouraging, but also surprising. I'm not joking when I say that such a thing is a trivial matter in a place like this. People all over this region live in subpar situations. People live without running water, without indoor plumbing, without electricity. Our cracked ceiling pales in comparison. But these men saw it right away and deemed it a necessary fix. We are grateful, especially since we weren't even going to bother asking them to take a look at it.
I eventually asked myself, "Was the fact that we gave up on repairing our ceiling a matter of laziness or a point of practicing contentment?"
I think it's both.
Some things cost too much time and energy to care. And some things simply won't ever find their way to the front burner because there are too many other fish to fry. And almost all things require a certain amount of emotional bandwidth to tackle. When considering everything that's already draining our daily bandwidth, something like a ceiling held up with tape hadn't registered in years.
I once heard of a missionary, also living in my host country, who had the time to do regular yoga sessions and meet people for coffee. I was astonished. Granted, her life and ministry were much different than ours - life in the capital city has certain amenities that don't exist in a rural town upcountry like ours, and non-medical ministry doesn't typically come with call schedules. This woman's life had bandwidth. I doubt her house had any rooms with cracks in the ceiling that remained there for years on end.
How I wish all missionaries could have that kind of bandwidth! How I wish no one had to give up on basic house maintenance because it just isn't worth the time or energy! How I wish our ministries could benefit from an overflow of emotional bandwidth!
But also, how I wish all missionaries could practice and exemplify more contentment! How I wish no one had to lose sight of what mattered most because a living space isn't up to their personal standards! How I wish our ministries wouldn't suffer from an overflow of unrealistic expectations and subsequent dissatisfaction. (I say this because I also know of situations in which missionaries were so concerned about house projects that it absorbed their focus to the detriment of all else.)
Did we become lazy in fixing our ceiling? Perhaps. Did we follow Paul's example to "be content in all circumstances" whether our house was in its best state or not (Philippians 4:11-12)? I suppose so.
I think the only thing we could have done differently would be to stop and ask ourselves, "Are we being lazy or content in this?" It can be difficult to know the difference, but it's worth asking because one is formed from a human heart and the other is born from a God-fearing heart.
We are people who pride ourselves on being content. It's been a foundational value of our marriage since the beginning, and it's something we've regularly discussed with our children and established as part of our family culture. There is far too little contentment in the world, and we hope to exude whatever contentment we can. But we also want to be diligent, intentional change-makers, which means choosing a path of action. In the future, I hope to pause and ask myself that question as needed: "Are we being lazy or content in this?"
How can we know when to let something stay on the back burner or move it to the front burner? The answer lies in asking the Lord. He is the one who anointed David king over Israel, and yet made him wait 15 years before becoming king over Judah, and another 7 years before becoming king over all Israel. He is also the one who led Paul to move on to the next city, or to remain where he was for a while.
God knows when we should stay still and when we should act. Our task is to seek Him in all things, even trivial things like a ceiling held in place with tape.
