May 20 – “The Shed”

This morning we did one of those fun, let's-do-it-together, marriage-builder kinds of things.  We put together the Rubbermaid outdoor shed that we bought to hold some of the salvaged stuff we now have piled in the backyard, the garage, and at our friend's house.    Before we ever bought it we carefully determined the size we wanted.  There is a five foot wide area between our side fence and the house that refuses to grow anything and has never been  any good for much of anything.  We have tried planting grass of several different varieties.  We tried miscellaneous groundcover plants.  We have covered it with those white landscaping rocks.  Aside from the occasional weeds, nothing has been right.  So we decided to use the area for storage.  And that meant finding a shed with just the right dimensions to fit the area and still hold enough junk to make it worth our while.  We searched online and at all the local joints.  All two of them – WalMart and Home Depot.  I finally found one with almost the exact dimensions we wanted at Lowe's.  So yesterday we stopped on our way home from the hospital and picked it up.   The box was really heavy.  A guy helped us get it into the truck, but we faced a dilemma when we got home.  Chris and I couldn't lift it out of the truck, much less carry it to the back yard.  But I had a plan.  Chris backed the truck into the driveway.  I shoved the box until it eased out of the bed.  Then we opened it and carried the individual pieces into the house one at a time.  Problem solved.   This morning we attacked.  Our first problem came when we realized it fit too well into our space.  There was no way we could assemble it in place without one of us getting stuck.  So we went ahead with it out in the open.  We figured we could just shove it back into our selected spot after it was all together.   Putting it together was actually fun.  That's one of our secrets to almost 35 happy years of marriage (come June 6th).  Do some productive project together every so often.  And it didn't take us all that long.  We finished in an hour or so, and Chris returned to getting the house ready for home group.  That gave me time to ponder how we would get it pushed into place.   The first order of business was to move out of the way the stacks of concrete blocks we put back there when we redid the patio area.  We were going to need every square inch of that space.  Once that was done Chris came back out for an inspection.  We decided to lay the blocks out all along that area to provide not just a floor for the shed, but also a walkway to get to it.  I figured it would also make it easier to slide the thing into place.  Just got about halfway done when we had to stop and get ready to go to see Chris' Mom in the hospital.  She's some better today, but they still have to drain fluid from her lungs, so she'll be there awhile.  And meanwhile our car is parked in their driveway in Bay City.  We'll get it someday.   2 Timothy 2:3 says, "Endure hardship with us like a good soldier of Christ Jesus."   Father, thank you for the endurance you have given Chris thus far.  Don't let up.  Amen.