Beauty without the Broom

Dear Fellow Pilgrim,

I need to make a confession: my house is a mess.

Perhaps, if you have read my carefully chosen words, you have imagined a home to match them. Something soft and candlelit. Something swept and settled. Something with linen curtains breathing in the windows, flowers on the table, a porch that welcomes, a yard that says, “Here lives a woman who knows how to keep beauty. But that is not the house I am living in.

When I say mess, I do not mean the kind of mess one can gather into baskets because company is coming. I do not mean dishes in the sink, toys underfoot, crumbs beneath the table. I mean a deeper kind of unfinished. The kind that has lingered for years. The kind that needs time, money, strength, consistency, and mercy.

My porch is unfinished. The ceiling and columns are bare to the bone, exposed where they should be covered, waiting to be wrapped in wood that might help the house remember its beauty. My fence is unfinished too—not merely unfinished, but stopped mid-work, as if the whole yard froze in the middle of an apology. The backyard is torn and waiting for grass, waiting for healing, waiting for the slow green evidence that something can still grow. Even that has stalled.

Inside, there are places still undone. A shower without its proper doors. Caulking needed in the kitchen. Windows not fully sealed. Fireplaces showing bare brick and old soot. Little reminders everywhere that we began, and then stopped. Began again, and stopped again. I wish I could say we are remodeling. But we have been “remodeling” for three years now. And I have judged us for it. I have judged my husband and myself with a severity I would be ashamed to offer another person. I have looked at our home and called it evidence. Evidence that we are inconsistent. Evidence that we are careless. Evidence that we have failed the house, failed the neighborhood, failed the version of ourselves I thought we should have become by now.

We live at the edge of a lovely neighborhood. Just around the corner are beautiful homes, large and settled and dignified, standing like they know who they are. And then there is ours—once charming, once cared for, once perhaps admired. And sometimes I feel as though we came to it and slowly revealed all the ways we could not keep up.

Every time we begin a new project—something meant to bring beauty, something I have long desired, a patio, a backyard, a more welcoming place to gather—we do not finish. And I have made a whole liturgy of complaint out of it. I have rehearsed the same sorrow again and again. I have stood before my husband like a prosecutor, presenting the evidence: the porch, the fence, the yard, the bushes, the windows, the soot. And beneath all of it was the quieter confession: I was ashamed. I wondered what the neighbors thought. Often. I wondered if they saw us as people who did not care. People who let things go. People who brought down the charm of the street. I tried to drown those thoughts, to push them under for the sake of my sanity, because I know how quickly shame can become a whirlpool, and how quickly a whirlpool can become a darkness I do not know how to climb out of.

But then, as I complained again—because the tongue, once trained in complaint, knows the path too well—a verse came to me. “Whoever is faithful in very little is also faithful in much.” And suddenly, the unfinished porch became more than an unfinished porch. I looked at the pollen gathered there, thick and yellow, waiting simply to be swept. I looked at the bushes needing trimming. I looked at the rose bushes I had barely loved because they did not live in the garden of my imagination. I looked at the magnolia tree, standing there with its quiet, generous beauty, and I realized something that undid me. I had not been faithful with my little. I had mostly been complaining that it was little. I had been given rose bushes. I had been given a magnolia tree. I had been given a porch, even an unfinished one. I had been given some privacy by the half-built fence. I had been given a home with freedom inside its walls. I had been given earth that can still grow grass, windows that still let in light, a table that can still hold flowers, children who can still run through the yard as it is. And I had looked at all of it and said, “Not enough.” Not with those exact words, perhaps. But with my neglect. With my resentment. With the way I withheld care from what I had because it was not yet what I wanted.

I told myself, “When the porch is finished, then I will make it beautiful.” “When the yard is repaired, then I will enjoy it.” “When the fence is done, then I will feel at peace.” “When the house looks the way it should, then I will care for it properly.” But this is not faithfulness. This is not thanksgiving. This is not the way of Christ.

In the Christian life, we are not saved by fantasies of someday. We are healed by repentance today. We are not asked to be faithful with the imaginary life, the perfected home, the completed plan, the version of ourselves that has finally arrived. We are asked to be faithful with what is in our hands. A broom. A rose bush. A tablecloth. A tired marriage conversation that needs gentleness instead of accusation. A porch covered in pollen. A yard that still looks wounded. A home that is not finished, but is still a home. And then another verse came, like a door opening inside me: “Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a few things; I will make you ruler over many things. Enter into the joy of your lord.”

How I long to hear those words. Not only at the end of my life, though above all there. But even now, in the hidden corners of my ordinary days. I want to hear them over my motherhood. Over my marriage. Over my work. Over my prayers. Over my home. And yet I saw how often I want the joy without the few things. I want the many things without the small obedience. I want the beauty without the broom. I want the harvest without tending the little patch of earth in front of me. I want to be trusted with more before I have loved what I have.

And this is where the last verse trembles in me with holy fear: “For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance; but from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away.” I wonder if this verse is mercifully plain. The one who “has” is not merely the one with much. It is the one who receives what is given. The one who sees the talent in his hand and knows it belongs to the Master. The one who tends it, blesses it, works with it, multiplies it through gratitude and obedience.

But the one who “does not have”—perhaps he is the one who has been given something, but refuses to receive it. The one who buries the gift beneath fear, resentment, comparison, or despair. The one who looks at his portion and says, “This is too small to love.” And if I keep despising my little, I may lose even the little joy I could have had in it. If I refuse to care for the rose bush because it is not yet a garden, I lose the roses. If I refuse to sweep the porch because it is not yet beautiful, I lose the peace of a swept porch. If I refuse to make my table warm because I do not have the curtains I want, I lose the feast that could have been set there today. This is not God being cruel. This is the nature of ingratitude. It takes what is present and makes it disappear.

Gratitude opens the eyes. Gratitude gathers what is scattered. Gratitude receives the little, and suddenly the little is no longer little. It becomes a place of meeting. A place of repentance. A place where Christ enters. Because Christ does not despise unfinished things. He does not wait until I am polished to enter. He does not stand far off until the rooms of my soul are worthy of Him. He comes to the manger. He comes to the wilderness. He comes to the sickbed, the roadside, the tomb. He comes to the places we are ashamed to show. And He says, “Begin here.”

So I will begin here. I will sweep the porch while it is still unfinished. I will trim the bushes while the fence is still undone. I will put magnolia flowers on the table before the room is perfect. I will stop punishing the little because it is not much. I will stop withholding tenderness from what God has actually given me. Not because gratitude is a strategy for getting more. But because gratitude is faithfulness. And faithfulness is love in work clothes.

Perhaps you have unfinished things too. A house. A body. A marriage. A dream. A soul. Perhaps you have been waiting to love your life until it looks more like the one you imagined. But the Kingdom often begins in the very place we are tempted to despise.

So let us be faithful with the few things. Let us thank God for the little before it becomes much. Let us sweep the porch while it is still unfinished. Let us place flowers on the table before the room is beautiful. Let us care for the life we have been given, not someday, but today. For the good and faithful servant is not the one who waited for perfect conditions. She is the one who loved what was placed in her hands.