Where I Discover Complaining Won't Get Me a Place For Shoes

"Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world..."   ... Philippians 2:14-16


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Really, we love our house. But our back porch! That's a royal headache, for there's no space for anything except my pair of yard shoes. 

Then Naomi moved here and where could her coming-in-from-outside shoes go? Even this handy-dandy solution, below, would require too much space at our house:

Seriously.

So Naomi placed her shoes beneath our kitchen dresser, but snow melted from them and left dirty pools of water there. Also, I didn't like sitting on the couch and staring at those shoes in my cute kitchen. (Picky? Me? Nah...)

Here's what I longed to create in the back porch:

There is space for a cupboard to be cut into the wall. I saw a similar one (though without doors) at an estate sale once and envy-swooned. 

But I've never built anything like that before. I've got ideas, of course, but I've a feeling I'd cry frustration tears halfway through. And yeah, we could hire a handyman (Tom's super busy at his full-time job and needs weekends to wind-down), but I'd rather wait until we're ready for Handy Man to tackle all the other wouldn't-it-be-nice ideas/tasks 'round here.

What to do? What to do? Keep complaining about the muddy puddles on the floor? No. That had accomplished nothing. So I asked God to please give me A Shoe Idea for now, one even I could accomplish and wow. He did.

I cleaned out the bottom drawer of the kitchen dresser along the wall:

... gave away some things, combined the rest into the middle drawer. Then I lined the empty drawer with two thick only-kinda-like-these placemats. Then added Naomi's shoes. And closed the drawer.

Oh, I felt so clever. Is it the perfect solution for forever? Probably not. But for now, it's terrific.

Of course, I could have kept complaining inside my head (I didn't say anything to Naomi because it's not her fault our back entryway is ridiculous). And I could've whined and felt helpless because I don't know how to build things.

But if I had, there'd still be those shoes, those puddles, beneath that dresser. Nothing would have changed.

Today's lesson? With God's help we can usually fix what annoys us. But we must push past complaining, laziness and seeing things only one way and learn, instead, to open our mind to godly inspiration.

And if we're annoyed by the way this world is going and feel helpless to fix that? We can pray and then become too busy to be annoyed by doing our own small part to make this world spin more smoothly.

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"Do what you can and ask God to do what you cannot."   ... Joyce Meyer

If we view something as hopeless then, for us, it will probably remain that way. But change our view and who knows what may happen?


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Need some great ideas for shoe storage in your own entryway?  Go here.


Ahhh... After this post I returned to thinking about my ideal worker, the one I first imagined out at the farm. Anyone else remember him?  :) 


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