Last Wednesday, a day that had been named by our contractor as a Potential Start Date, The Husband and I drove over to the new house, fingers and toes crossed in the hope that we would see something–anything–that would show us some work had begun.  Measurements on the walls, big X’s on doors, even a toilet seat left up, for the love of God.  But when we walked inside, the still air of our intact (damn!) house greeted us and we reset our Hope Dials to Monday. Today.  Today will be, must be, the day they start to tear shit up.

It feels strange, this yearning for the elements of destruction: dust-covered floors, holes in walls and ceilings, floors ripped up, countertops demolished.  As self-appointed World Representative for Peace and Order and Clean Surfaces in the Home, I never find myself praying for men to be attacking mine with sledgehammers.  I remember last October when I walked into my New York apartment after a week spent in TH’s homeland of California, a week full of wineries and beachfronts.  I opened the door to my shoebox and stepped into the wreckage that my roommate had called to warn me about days earlier: an inch-thick layer of dust, plastic taped half-ass and falling off to reveal plumbing in the ceiling, bootprints on formerly-shining hardwood.  I had little long-term emotional, and zero long-term financial, investment in that property, so any effort at improving it was only a disruption of my orderly existence. But this new house…this is my long-term landing pad found after years of hoping and waiting and wandering; this is the gift of a plan gone right.  And if someone does not start tearing it up soon I will scream.

Sometimes I’m shocked I haven’t gone over there with a wrecking ball myself. After all, that’s how I have (unwittingly but for hindsight) approached much of my life.  For so long, I felt that my singlehood was an aberration, a curse, a punishment from a God who was not playing fair.  I felt like Toby on The Office, entering the church and asking, “Why you always gotta be so mean to me?”  Had I settled down into the makeshift plan I had created for myself, I would never have felt the drive to leave the South and move to New York, would never have endured the coldest winters and worst dates, would never have made the best friends.  I would never have said “I do” underneath a rainbow on my favorite beach, would never have learned how damaging it is to take myself so seriously, would never have learned about how many forms love can take.  I would never have pissed off my friends who thought I was being too picky when I maintained disinterest in the guys with whom they fixed me up.  I would have been too busy maintaining an image to sit behind a computer screen and write about who I really am.

What I can only see now, looking backward, is that every time I railed against the unraveling of my own plan I was fighting the unfolding of a better one.  I would gladly, blindly have taken a sledgehammer to the life I was heading toward, not knowing all that awaited me if I would just believe.

The faith I embraced as a child had to be transformed, uncomfortably, to become real–to know its object was not created in my image.  To know that love and hope were not as small as the outline I gave them.  To trust that there was a life for me that includes multiple places to call “home” in a nationwide radius and a partner with a Yankee accent.  To find that life is not a fairy tale, which is a blessing because I’ve never heard a version of Cinderella in which she laughs like a hyena.  To discover a love that is patient enough to bear my wrecking balls in the form of dustbusters and irritability and, at the end of the day, still be willing to explain the rules of football to me.

To believe that Not Now doesn’t mean Never.