December 4 – “Shoveling Insulation”

Have you ever shoveled insulation?  I mean the kind that is blown into the attic by some loud machine after the ceiling is safely in place.  That's what I've been doing the last two days.  I've said before, demo is a lot of fun, but I really don't like the cleaning up part.  There's nothing quite like ripping out a big hunk of ceiling sheetrock.  Especially dodging the falling debris when your four-prong rake catches a really big piece.  I have been smacked in the head more than once yesterday and today.   See, I forgot and hooked a piece pulling toward me instead of away.  Every time I did it, I could hear my Dad's voice saying, "Always push the knife away from you."  I guess I didn't do so well as a kid playing with ... er … I mean … carving with knives, either.  Anyway, every time I ducked or got hit, I got mad at that inanimate object that just pierced my personal space.    Another thing that made me mad was that insulation.  I would very carefully scoop up a shovelful of the stuff and even more carefully place it into the wheelbarrow.  That is, unless I accidentally hit one of the handles, or simply missed - at which point insulation flew everywhere.  Not just to the ground right there nearby.  No.  Insulation has a way of spreading when it hits the ground and taking up twice the space it did in the attic.  Which meant that I had to pick up twice as much – twice the work.  And have you ever tried to sweep the stuff?  That's almost impossible.  It grabs hold of the broom and refuses to let go.  It's like picking up a whole colony of sticker burrs.  But if the broom comes near a pile of insulation and doesn't make contact … it's like the stuff is a bunch of feathers on the losing end of a pillow fight.  It flies everywhere.  And I have to pick it up – twice as much.  Who wouldn't get mad?   After the fourth or fifth smack in the head and while I was scooping up this one pile for the third or fourth time, a thought hit me as well.  A whole lot of the time, the things that make me mad are the things that make me look stupid.  It's not that I have been given a reason to be righteously angry.  It's just that if someone saw me miss the wheelbarrow with a whole load of insulation, or try to sweep a pile of it away from the studs and slap it back deeper into the crevices instead … if someone else saw me, what would they say?  And there's the rub.  Whenever you start worrying about what someone else will think, you have crossed the line into that grand experience called pride.  And Proverbs 16:18 says, "Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall."    Father, forgive my wheelbarrow full of insulation moments.  Amen.