You are building a house. Or more likely, you are paying people to build it for you. These people are doing a tremendous job. Everything they’ve done on it is gorgeous. You can’t wait to live in it.
But you have to. Wait, I mean. For a long time. Because the terrible truth about building a house – and this is equally true of renovating, remodeling, or building an addition – is that it always takes longer than you think it will. No, that’s not the terrible truth. That’s just the truth, period.
The terrible truth is that the house looks inhabitable long before it actually is.
It’s all well and good to drive up to the site early on and gaze upon the many skilled workpeople employing their many skills – the excavators, the foundation- pourers, the carpenters – and gawk happily at how much is being done in such a short period of time. Then you can go on back to wherever-you-live-while-your-house-is-being-built-or-renovated-or-added-to. This place probably has heat, electricity, plumbing, a phone line, the Internet, furniture, and working appliances.
In other words, while the house is coming together on the outside, the process is marked by two specific facts: When you drive up to it, 1) it is very easy to see the progress, all of which is beautiful and impressive and inspiring and exciting, and 2) it doesn’t actually look like a place you want to live in yet.
But thenthe house reaches the bench mark of being really and truly finished on the outside. Now, the process becomes marked by two new specific facts: When you drive up to it, 1) it is impossible to see any progress, and 2) it looks like a place you want to live in – now. Comments from helpful friends about how fabulous and nearly done it looks only add to this experience. Of course, it still lacks heat, electricity, plumbing, a phone line, the Internet, furniture, and all appliances (working or otherwise). As much as you are tempted to go ahead and move into it anyhow, you are advised against doing so, by both the general contractor, who would consider your presence a nuisance, and the town hall, which would consider your presence illegal.
Despite all appearances, there are months left before you can move in. During that period, no matter how often you stare at it, it will not look any different. It will be transforming within, in mysterious and fascinating ways, and if you want to really annoy all the skilled workpeople, you could go inside, hover over them, and ogle them, but that is generally not recommended.
Therefore, you have now reached the excruciating period when you must be truly patient, and wait, like expectant parents before birth. Don’t you wish you believed in animism? Then you could distract yourself from the agony of waiting by bringing burnt offerings unto the house, in the hopes that she (houses are always female, even bachelor pads) would come to life in answer to your prayers. But being the reasonable person that you are, you simply have to get a grip.
Or you could reach out for help. This being the Vineyard – a haven for twelve-step programs of all stripes, as well as a place with constant new-home growth – it is surprising there is not yet help for people obsessed with the completion of their homes. So with complete respect for the twelve-step process, but as an obsessive house-waiter myself, I’ve come up with this (some might say, tongue-in-cheek) guide:
1. Admit you are powerless over the speed at which your house will be finished – that your life has become unmanageable from obsessing on the matter.
2. Come to believe that only a power greater than yourself can help you overcome this obsession.
3. Make a decision to turn your will and your life over to the care of God, as you understand God.
4. After a good self-search inventory, come to realize you were hoping that taking step number three would result in God building your house faster.
5. Admit to God, to yourself, and to your general contractor that you are deficient in your expectation and it just doesn’t work like that.
6. Be entirely ready to have God remove this defect of unreal expectation.
7. Humbly ask God to remove said defect.
8. Make a list of all persons you have really annoyed with your obsession, and become willing to make amends to them. Tops on the list should probably be your general contractor.
9. Make direct amends to your general contractor, except when to do so might give him the impression you don’t mind how long your house is taking.
10. Continue to take personal inventory, and when you are wrong promptly admit it – unless there’s even a chance it means your house will take longer.
11. Seek through prayer and meditation to improve your conscious contact with whatever mystical forces in the universe can make your house get finished sooner.
12. Realize there are no such mystical forces, and you still simply need to get a grip.
After two years, Jane Doe, her husband, and their dog are now happily ensconced in their new home.
