If No Roof is Overhead

Husband loosens nails, reverses screws' direction to peel rusted tin from the barn's roof. I give the all clear, and he flings another weather-pierced sheet like a frisbee so he need not abandon his ridge-pole post.

I've lost count as to what step this is in our endeavor to re-purpose his Paw Paw's old chicken coop turned workshop into a garden house for me..."playhouse" if you ask the children. As for my part, I'm stuck in the middle of a paint job until I force myself to make a decision about coating the last side in redwood.

Until then, though, I sit and watch, finding joy in simply watching husband work, visible sweat drops on his face gathering and succumbing to gravity under an already 90+ degree Louisiana sun. The grounded one, I am charged with keeping track of the children and occasionally climbing up an eight foot ladder to deliver a drill bit or hammer. What I want to do, though, is be up there with him, working side by side at our married best.

From the outside, there's not that much difference--just a missing roof. But once I walk through the door, this one-room building that has always seemed so very dark to me...I'm amazed at how different it looks.

Light streams through open rafters, illuminating the cypress' warm reddish coloring where before, everything had seemed so drab and brown. Even the rough-hewn floorboards look more rustic than dirty.

When I look upwards, my breath catches. The beams crisscross at right angles, serving as simple picture frames for the priceless God-created art living and breathing just beyond these walls.
Looking out a roof is so different than looking out a window. Maybe it's the lack of separating glass. Maybe it's the nakedness. Whatever it is, I know its beauty.

While I'm not about to rip the roof off my home so I can gaze in wonder upon the stars each night, I do wonder how much we miss by closing everything in.

What if we let a little more of His light into our lives? What would He show us?

What could He transform?