Now it may surprise you to learn that in His efforts to get permanent possession of a soul, He relies on the troughs even more than on the peaks; some of His special favourites have gone through longer and deeper troughs than anyone else.
—C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters
I’ll never forget what our floors first looked like.
That weekend we, with much trepidation, crawled on our hands and knees holding box cutters and pliers, coaxing our ancient carpet away from the solid oak underneath. I remember that graying rug with clarity, as it was caked in decades of dust and by all accounts remained unsalvageable. We worked diligently, prying staple after stubborn staple, rubbing blisters from our thumbs and sending endless puffs of dog hair into the air. A tension headache began its crawl through my neck by the time we were done, and as we sat cross legged on the newly exposed planks we knew we were both in over our heads.
Sludge from the padding glued different areas of the floor in patches, exposing rough hewn spaces that were clearly the result of foot traffic and moisture. I cringed at the gray green stains dotting small areas here and there, only guessing at their origin. We stared for a good five minutes at the 4 layers of vinyl tile baked by the sun into the corner. How many little paws have traversed and scratched and potty trained on these floors? How many toddlers with sippy cups christened them with Kool-Aid and applesauce? How many times were soups and water glasses and coffee mugs slipped from busy hands? How many high heels, socked feet, loafers and snow boots? How many paper cuts, stubbed toes, and tears from yet-to-be-kissed boo boos? How many late nights under lamp light, or afternoons with sun soaking in from the windows? I didn’t want to believe these floors were done yet, but it was evident that they’d seen so much. The stories were written all over the wood.
This was a fool’s errand. And I guess I was just the fool for the job.
I wish I could tell you that glittering inspiration and starry eyed hope was the reason I pressed on. It was some of that. It was also the river of raging, stubborn will that runs rampant in Stueber women, along with a decorative addition of spite after someone insinuated that they didn’t think I could do it. Blake had no doubts about the mission. I had many. But I also have a permanent soft spot in my heart for aging objects that have seen things. At the very least, I could try.
The week was planned—November, when it was convenient for both of us to take PTO and the HVAC could be turned off without affecting the temperature too much. We booked a hotel, made arrangements, and budgeted for equipment. Doorways were taped off, and air vents removed. After a dozen tries, the vinyl was successfully scraped off. And finally, we were ready to rent the sander.
Removing the finish is the hardest part. One worker from the hardware store suggested we use an orbital sander as it was more forgiving, but we quickly found out we were going to need something far more aggressive to get all the years off of this floor. A drum sander was the only thing that would do, and they—especially of the non-professional rented variety—need a special amount of practice and finesse.* Drum sanders are a particularly heavy machine that need to be balanced properly and kept from pulling the wrong way. The lights would flicker every time I turned the darned thing on. No less than three passes with varying degrees of sandpaper is required, otherwise the boards will be left uneven and course. So it stands to reason that sloughing off all the old polyurethane was slow, steady, sweaty work, complete with a humid ring round my face where the N95 lived for hours at a time. It took me three days and by the end of it, I felt like I had been hit by a train. Blake had to finish with the edger because my arms were too sore to control it anymore. I’d leave the house every night barefoot and cloudy with sawdust, hoping against hope we wouldn’t have to throw up our hands and cover it up with carpet again.
Thank God for Advil and heating pads.
By Tuesday morning, I nervously opened the door into the dining room and inspected the naked boards after the overnight dust had settled into the corners. A soft oak greeted me—satin white in the morning sun, the porous, vulnerable material ready and waiting. There are few things that feel better than a warm floor on bare feet, newly smooth and ready for an oil stain. I noted a few splotches I tried to correct, hoping that Minwax could help us out. I glanced at the corner where the vinyl once lay and could barely believe I got it up. Standing in the middle of the living room I raked my hand through my hair in disbelief. We did it. We actually did it.
I hated removing all the stories this floor had to tell. Everything it had been through mattered to me. But buffing out the scum and the fuzz and the faded patches and the rough indentions was necessary if I wanted to make room for something new.
I didn’t know it yet, but in the thick of it my heart was being prepared for a weird kind of loss I should have anticipated, but didn’t.
God must know I love a good metaphor.
There are a lot of catchphrases floating around, as catchphrases do. Toxic. Progressive. Exvangelical. Cancel Culture. Normalize. Influencer. Neurodivergent. Doomscrolling. Inflammatory rhetoric. Usually trendy, sometimes overused and reductive…most existing for a reason. Deconstruction was never one I anticipated resonating with.
Evangelical leaders of any variety** have now gotten ahold of the word Deconstruction and managed to thoroughly confuse it with Deconversion. The assumption is that one will automatically lead to the other. Sometimes that’s true, but it isn’t often or always. Most of the people I know going through the deconstruction passage want to hold onto their faith. So before taking all your prepared quips about how this is just a trendy topic recently coined and run off the rails, let me let you in on a little secret: this thing we’ve happened upon isn’t sexy, or entitled, or prideful, or clever.
It’s lonely.
There’s a spectrum to it that’s always a part of the conversation. But across the whole thing exists an irreversible point where you must start asking some really hard questions about the place where you’ve made your home. You are aware that people will never be perfect, and that this family has been patient with you, too. You’ve learned, tangibly, what restorative forgiveness looks like. You’ve understood on a primal level how the love of God is like a hurricane and an ocean and a new mother all at once. You’ve tried to reckon all of it with a culture that has taught you to keep secrets so well and after a while, it starts to become too heavy. Reality settles in, crashing and uninvited. Disillusionment strips away all the things you thought you knew. You become way less fun to be around. You know any attempt to talk about it will be received as an attack. It’s a devastating moment where you suddenly look around you and realize, after all this time, that the fruit is rotten. You uncover how much hope you have put into certainty. You are grieving something that doesn’t make sense.
The smallest, quietest part of you doesn’t want to believe the floor is done. It’s still there, beckoning.
So you make your way down the hallway, pulling up squares of carpet and padding and staples to get to the boards underneath. You are slowly sanding away the years of bad theology, westernized homogenization, patriotic idolatry, religious trauma, everything you were involuntarily on the sidelines for, and every excuse made to refuse loving your neighbor. You mourn this loss, and accept this invitation to dig into the uncertainty and figure out what it is teaching you. You are in over your head. It is slow, steady, sweaty work.
And it is lonely.
This is usually the part in the blog post when someone who has shown little concern over the vulnerable in a pandemic wants to take me to coffee. Their treat.
So if your friends are going through this thing—this questioning, this stripping disillusionment, this grief that doesn’t make sense—please understand it for what it is and leave behind the things it isn’t. Save your “hard to swallow pills” for some other subject, they only serve to create cynics. Try your best to put your defenses down, even just for a minute. Maybe take some friendship notes from Tolkien.*** Sanding old floors is tough, fearful, vulnerable work.
You never know. One day it might be happening in your house. And if you’re lucky, you just might have someone to walk through it with you.
Who knows? Maybe they’ll even know how to use a drum sander.
Footnotes:
*There are divots in the guest room that bear witness to my beginner days.
**To clarify, I’m not really into this whole “get Matt Chandler canceled” thing. I think people on both sides of the aisle have taken an old clip and ran with it, thinking that it’s helpful, and it isn’t.
***Like if you’re gonna yell, maybe make it about magic trees or something.
