Previous Challenge Entry (Level 3 - Advanced)
Topic: MOTEL (03/06/25)
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TITLE: Love and Renovations | Previous Challenge Entry
By Daniel Rae
03/22/25 -
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We had bought the house and rented at an off-season resort. The renovation started out good. Agreeing on what needed to come out of the house was easy enough. But the unexpected costs were quick to surface and the tension surfaced with them.
The countertops could not be removed without destroying the maple cupboards and drawers in the process. So now it was time to shop for cabinetry of a fairly high quality. I dislike shopping, especially for cupboards and drawers and pulls. While buying items that you didn’t expect to replace, one should be sullen and downtrodden. My wife however was enthusiastic beyond words. As she flip-flopped between an endless variety of pulls, I was like a young boy, forced to endure his mother’s endless journey through a craft store.
A quote came in for the cost to demolish and then remove the current cabinetry, just as we were being quoted the price for the new replacement cabinets that my wife had picked out. I was languishing on a vital chair as my beloved turned towards me with a look that I would, in short time, learn to despair. It was a look that combined a bewildering enthusiasm within a look that clearly expected my approval. An entire gruesome day had come down to this and we were just getting started on the reno. I nodded my approval obediently, which felt much more like defeat. As we drove home I bit my tongue when it came to certain queries like “why do we need cupboards that concealed almost every appliance?” Instead we quietly drove back to our temporary home in silence. Tomorrow was floor day and we needed our rest. But rest could wait. She’d had an endless sample of wooden floors dropped at the doorstep. “Great” she exclaimed. “The flooring samples are here”!
I anticipated a process that had me vainly showing approval or disapproval as each sample was analyzed to death. After an hour or two I meekly inquired about price. I was quickly told that allowing price to determine our “forever home” was short-sighted. I learned that money spent now should be mentally amortized over the next 20 years. We’d paid cash for the house and were left with almost zero in savings, factoring in assumed renovation costs. And as I uttered my concern I was met with a strong and resolute reply. “We’ll put a HELOC on it” she said, despite agreeing from the very beginning that we wouldn’t buy anything that would require a mortgage or a loan.
My pent up frustration with overspending hurtled out of my mouth. Then the very thing I wished to avoid, erupted into a chilling war of words.
I drove south to Parksville till I was on a stretch of road that was littered with motels and motor Inns. I was exhausted and pulled into the first one. In the office I was greeted by a surly old gent. The lobby was rudimentary. The smell of cigarette smoke belied a No Smoking sign. I was given a key with the number 8 on it. I’d come too far to renege on the room and went out into the rain to move my car to the door of #8. I went into the room and the smell reminded me of Aunt Ann’s, a chain smoker and oldest sister to my mom. The bed looked like a centennial survivor and the idea of crawling in disrupted me. I took a moment to pray, something I should have done with my wife before I’d run away. I asked The Lord to let me accept His guidance and to spend more time in prayer with my wife.
Just then my phone pinged and I saw she’d left me a message. “Where are you?” I messaged her right back and said “I had to grab a few things then I'll be back”. “Okay. Hurry up.I miss you. And drive safe. The rain is really coming down”.
I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
Ephesians 5:25 NIV
Husbands love your wives, even as Christ loved the Church and gave himself for it.
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I liked the ending.