sometimes love doesn't look like love

dirty rags on the floor,
hamper and buckets out of place

cleaning supplies on top of my washer

rather than where they belong 

the short hose that runs from the outdoor spigot 
to the reel that stores my 50' hose is in my laundry room

baseboards are removed

hall is blocked and furniture is out of place

These photos may make you cringe. 
They may make you thankful you are not living at my house. 
(I don't have pictures of the worst of it.)
But they are beautiful pictures of love. 
Read on and I think you will look at them differently.

Tonight John and Quentin moved the hamper and cleaning supplies so they could get to my hot water heater to repair it. They left them out of place because they didn't want to put things in the wrong places. They used the rags, buckets and hose as they worked. They did not put the hose back because it has been getting close to freezing the last two nights. I didn't know leaving a hose connected to the house could cause plumbing problems, but they did. Now I do too, before it caused an issue!

This is real.
I just whited out stuff that shouldn't be in a blog post. 
I can't use it, but check 8244 is not wasted by any means.

Sometimes love is a blank check. I met John and Quentin two days ago. A friend's dad and brother-in-law. They bought fittings. They worked for three hours by themselves while I was away at an anniversary celebration. They would not allow me to write them this check. Not even for the supplies. Instead, they prayed with me before they left and asked God's peace and blessing over me. I can never repay them for what they have done for me.

Now for the other two photos. I am getting almost 2,000 square feet of hardwood flooring installed. I had a whole lot of carpet to pull up along with padding, carpet tack strips and the staples they used to secure the padding. I am also removing baseboards to make the job easier. I pulled up about 500 sq. feet by myself Wednesday. Thursday Ruth came and helped me do two rooms. Friday she and Kyle came and pulled up the carpet and padding in another room and the huge upstairs hall. Only two more rooms and the stairs have carpet. This afternoon while I went to soccer practice to meet recruits they organized as much of the chaos as they could. They took the padding and carpet we have been dragging to the back porch and rolled and bound it with rope or put it in a trash bags if it was too small to roll. They also stacked most of the baseboard in one of two places. They are returning to help pull up carpet tack strip and staples from the rooms we've worked on. 

Now that you know the backstory look at the photos again. 

Can you see what I see?

There is lots and lots of love scattered throughout my house. 
And stacked neatly by the trash can and in rolls out of the way in the front yard for the sanitation engineers to take care of after I make arrangements.