I love, love, love it when I get a vision of something and it turns better than I had thought.

Take this coffee table for instance. It is a plywood table that my son made in woodshop in grade 11. He is now 30 and I have kept it this whole time. I have faithfully moved it from place to place and in the recent move to our new house it has a place of prominence in our “red” room (tv, fireplace room).

I had wondered about making it fit more into our color pattern and bought black and red paint to chalk paint it.

Brian, my hubby has been on a bit of a kick this winter collecting firewood. We now have a fireplace in the red room and we love the coziness of a fire. I went out to help him stack the wood against our fence one day and much to my horror, he was placing the wood on top of these 1 x 6’s that I had finished for another project. Well that came to a complete halt as I marched those beautiful pieces right back into the house.

That was when the idea popped into my head: the top for the coffee table. I placed them on top of the table and knew it was going to be amazing! I painted the legs black and then glued and clamped the 1” x 6”s on top. A couple of coats of varathane, tea stained the raw edges to match and Wha La! A brand new creation – our coffee table!

I had told my son that I was refurbishing his table and I giggled inside when he walked right by it and I even said, “do you notice anything new in the room?” He hadn’t. When we pointed out his table he said he would never have recognized it!

I want to be like that! I want people to say they would not recognize me.

Now I am not talking about botox, or nipping and tucking, anyone can pay someone to do that, I am talking about from the inside. Inside work is tougher.

I have invited the Holy Spirit to come and live inside of me and God has stated that His goal is to make me more like Jesus:

“…being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6

What is the good work God started? To become more like Jesus. It is God who works through me, it is supernatural, but I have to let Him. He will never force this work on anyone, it is totally a matter of the will. Will I let Him do some renos?

This is quite an undertaking in me! My old nature, the person who I was before I had a relationship with God was not always nice, I was rather rude, arrogant, argumentative, lots of pity parties, so selfish. I was quite the mess!

I pray with all my heart that now when people look at me, they will see some of God’s nature reflecting out of me. I have chosen to align myself with His ways (okay, I still struggle with some of them…) but I am a work in progress.

Just like my coffee table, which is not perfect, and has nicks, flaws, mis-matched color and some cracks, but it is unrecognizable as the old work now a new and beautiful creation. That is want I want to be!