Our house is over 100 years old. Sometimes it just feels so dirty. And creaky. And high maintenance.

Sometimes I feel like our house is a never ending project. It is huge and the exterior needs painting. Scraping, priming and painting this thing is taking forever and our house looks a little bit dingy while it undergoes the tedious and laborious process.

Inside, Matt’s been insulating several rooms. Plaster comes off, dust forms everywhere, drywall goes up – walls are still unfinished while Matt instead focuses on painting the exterior.

The bathrooms need help. Paint is peeling, the floors need tile. Something weird is going on with the bathtub. The sink has hard water stains.

Most of our walls aren’t smooth, mostly because they’re made of 105 year old plaster. They have chinks and dings in them.

There’s a big draft in our guest room. We don’t have central air conditioning. It’s hard to keep our house warm in the winter.

Do you want me to keep going?

No, you really don’t. I love my house and I’m thankful for my house, but it is very old and takes a lot of constant work to upkeep. I don’t think we’ll ever be caught up on all the home improvement projects we’d like to do.

Sometimes that really bothers me. We love having company, and sometimes I wonder what people think when they stay here. Are they noticing the cracks? The peeling paint? The weird thing going on with the bathtub? Do they see the dangling mini-blinds that our boys yanked down, the gap in the game room ceiling that needs repair, the piece of trim that is missing?

Maybe they do. Some of them surely do. Our house is a work in progress and my prideful heart sometimes cares too much about what other people think. It really shouldn’t matter and it’s not something that should worry me, but sometimes I let it get to me anyway.

But recently, a friend that I haven’t seen for a while came over. She and her family have been living in a tiny home with hardly any yard or living space for her kids to run around and play. She wasn’t complaining, just telling me the latest.

She kept exclaiming over how big my house is, how pretty the living room is, how nice it is that we have a garden, how beautiful my kitchen is, how great, how great, how great.

Really? My house.

Great? Pretty? Nice?

Did you see the unfinished drywall? The varieties of colors on the outside of my house as we go from yellow to bare wood to white primer to taupe?

It seems that it’s all a matter of perspective. And a new perspective is what I need.

What other people see or notice or think doesn’t matter. What matters is that I appreciate the gift God has given me. Even if the gift does have peeling paint.

My house is beautiful and we are blessed.

It’s all a matter of perspective.

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