{"id":766,"date":"2026-10-01T06:13:46","date_gmt":"2026-10-01T11:13:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/?p=766"},"modified":"2026-10-01T06:13:47","modified_gmt":"2026-10-01T11:13:47","slug":"two-seasons-one-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/2026\/10\/01\/two-seasons-one-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Seasons, One House"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<!-- POST TITLE: Two Seasons, One House -->\n<style>@import url('https:\/\/fonts.googleapis.com\/css2?family=Oswald:wght@400;500;700&family=Newsreader:ital,wght@0,400;0,500;1,400&display=swap');\n.ohands{--bg:#F5ECCC;--darkest:#17343B;--mid:#275C65;--heading:#C04B42;--cool:#2F83A3;--light:#FFD279;--surface-verse:#FFF6E3;--surface-deep:#DCE8DE;font-family:'Newsreader',Georgia,serif;color:var(--darkest);background:var(--bg);max-width:720px;margin:2em auto;padding:2.5em 2em;line-height:1.7;font-size:1.05em}\n.ohands .eyebrow{font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-size:.85em;letter-spacing:.18em;text-transform:uppercase;color:var(--mid);font-weight:500;margin:0 0 .4em}\n.ohands h2{font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.3em;letter-spacing:.08em;text-transform:uppercase;color:var(--mid);margin:2em 0 .7em;border-bottom:1px solid var(--heading);padding-bottom:.3em}\n.ohands .verse{font-family:'Newsreader',Georgia,serif;font-style:italic;font-size:1.08em;line-height:1.6;letter-spacing:normal;background:var(--surface-verse);border-left:4px solid var(--heading);padding:1.1em 1.4em;margin:1.4em 0;color:var(--darkest)}\n.ohands .verse-cite{display:block;font-style:normal;font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-size:.82em;letter-spacing:.1em;color:var(--mid);margin-top:.6em;text-transform:uppercase}\n.ohands .divider{border:none;border-top:1px solid var(--heading);margin:2em auto;width:80px}\n.ohands p{margin:0 0 1.1em}\n.ohands .pull{font-family:'Oswald',sans-serif;font-weight:500;font-size:1.15em;letter-spacing:.04em;color:var(--darkest);border-top:1px solid var(--heading);border-bottom:1px solid var(--heading);padding:1em 0;margin:1.6em 0;text-align:center;line-height:1.4}\n.ohands .ohands-deep{background:var(--surface-deep);border-left:4px solid var(--cool);padding:1.1em 1.4em;margin:1.4em 0}\n@media (max-width:600px){.ohands{padding:1.6em 1.2em}}<\/style>\n<div class=\"ohands\">\n<p class=\"eyebrow\">Open Hands &middot; Week 2 &middot; Thursday &middot; ANXIETY<\/p>\n<p>The baby was due in six weeks. The contractor had a slot in four.<\/p>\n<p>It made sense on paper, and paper is where most of these decisions get made. Do the disruption now, before everything changes, and be finished and tidy by the time the baby comes home. They ran the numbers. The numbers worked.<\/p>\n<p>Four weeks in they were washing dishes in the bathroom sink. The back half of the house was sealed behind plastic sheeting. The appliance delivery had slipped twice. She was thirty-seven weeks pregnant and walking past a stud wall to get to the bathroom at two in the morning.<\/p>\n<p>Neither of them was doing anything wrong. That is what makes this one worth sitting with.<\/p>\n<p class=\"verse\">a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to break down and a time to build,<span class=\"verse-cite\">Ecclesiastes 3:3 (BSB)<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Both Are Good Work<\/h2>\n<p>Breaking down and building are both in the list. Neither one is the failure. Ecclesiastes is not warning anyone off renovating a house, and it is certainly not warning anyone off having a baby.<\/p>\n<p>What the verse will not do is let them be the same time.<\/p>\n<p>That whole chapter is built on pairs that cannot run simultaneously &mdash; weep and laugh, keep and discard, be silent and speak. Every pair is a season with its own work in it, and the assumption underneath all of them is that the works take turns. You can want both. You cannot be in both.<\/p>\n<p class=\"pull\">Seasons do not stack. When you try, something gives, and it is rarely the thing you would have chosen.<\/p>\n<h2>What It Cost<\/h2>\n<p>They called the contractor and pushed the whole job to spring.<\/p>\n<p>It cost the deposit, which was real money they did not have spare, on work that had already begun. It cost them the schedule they had been proud of. It cost him, specifically, the feeling of having gotten ahead of something for once &mdash; and I think that was the more expensive of the two.<\/p>\n<p>The plastic came down. The kitchen went back to being a kitchen: old counters, old sink, and the cabinet door that has never quite closed right since they moved in.<\/p>\n<p class=\"verse\">Of course, godliness with contentment is great gain.<span class=\"verse-cite\">1 Timothy 6:6 (BSB)<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"ohands-deep\">\n<p>Contentment does not mean he stopped noticing the door. He notices it every single day. Contentment here is much smaller and much harder than peace about the counters &mdash; it is being willing to be in one season at a time when you are perfectly capable of starting two.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>He says that door is going to bother him every day until spring, and that it is the cheapest thing he has ever bought.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Open Hands &middot; Week 2 &middot; Thursday &middot; ANXIETY The baby was due in six weeks. The contractor had a slot in four. It made sense on paper, and paper is where most of these decisions get made. Do the&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":767,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-open-hands"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/SU_20261001_BLOG.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":768,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766\/revisions\/768"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stumbleup.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}