Road Construction Season

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11

In Wisconsin, we have a saying that is probably common in other northern states as well:

Wisconsin has four seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, and road construction.

Right now it is still road construction season.

Detours

Our downtown is a mess. Since May, a section of a main street has been torn up—and it’s more than surface work. The city is replacing sewer and water mains under the road, completely removing and rebuilding the roadway all the way down to the gravel base, and replacing sidewalks and driveways affected by the construction. All of this has the added complexity of railroad tracks that run right through the middle of the area.

Going from one side of downtown to the other requires a detour, and some elements of the detour change from one week to the next, depending on what work is being done. As different pieces of work get done, new work is created elsewhere. As each stage is completed, new equipment needs to be brought in and more construction clutter seems to accumulate. Sometimes it seems that the more construction mess I see, the more progress is being made.

My son’s job is right by the train tracks. For a while, we were able to approach his workplace from a number of directions, as long as we drove carefully. Now we can only come from the east, and even that is pretty much a dirt road at the moment.

We can get where we need to go, but we have to put up with a lot of noise, dust, disruption, bumpy roads, change, frustration, stopped traffic, and uncertainty about when road construction will be over.

Eventually this road work will be finished, and we will be able to freely drive through the neighborhood, with mostly smooth streets.

A road construction project does not last forever. Road construction is only a season, after all.

To those of us driving to drive from one side of town to the other, road construction mostly seems like a mess—but we know there is an engineer who has designed it and that someone is managing the project with a clear vision of how the mess will all fit together as part of a design.

A mess

As I drove to pick my son up from work recently, I discovered that my usual detour was no longer an option. I had to take the long way around. As I carefully drove on unfamiliar streets, I realized that road construction season is a a good metaphor for working on sex.

As I began the journey to address my issues with sex and the impact on my marriage, it seemed that a whole lot in my life had been torn up.

The work I did wasn’t just on the surface. I dismantled my thoughts and feelings about sex, removing untruthful beliefs and harmful thoughts, replacing them with God’s truth and a positive view of sex. I dug all the way down to the base of my issues and did a lot of rebuilding.

Our marriage faced a lot of detours. Our years together had taught us both patterns of interactions. We often discovered that progress in one area would stir something up in another area.

Doing something that used to seem simple would often require detours, as I kept discovering what else I had to deal with.

We could get to where we needed to, but we also had to deal with emotional noise and clutter, bumpy patches, change, frustration, stalling, and a whole lot of uncertainty about when construction would be over.

Just a season

Doing real work on our struggles with sex requires us to do a substantial amount of work. We have to deconstruct and reconstruct our understanding of God’s design for sex. We must face our heart hurt.

We don’t know what to expect from one week or month to the next, and we sometimes wonder if we will ever be able to easily navigate through our marriages.

Although I am still on this journey of reconstruction, I have gotten to the part of the process when the barricades are down and there are only occasional detours or bumps.

I am nearing the end of construction season.

It is just a season, after all.

When we begin the work, we don’t know how long this season will last. We don’t know the detours or bumps we will encounter.

We don’t know—but God does.

The Master Engineer has a vision and a plan. He knows how all the pieces will come together. It is his design.

Many are the plans in a person’s heart, but it is the Lord’s purpose that prevails. Proverbs 19:21

Image courtesy of hywards at FreeDigitalPhotos.net