I was talking with my friend Olivia recently about learning the skill of “receiving.” She is finally starting to accept that her work doesn’t establish or “prove” her worth, but that she is inherently worthy just as she is.
As we spoke, a vision of a construction site came to mind. I realized that God gives us every raw material needed to build a perfect life—to build ourselves in His image. But sometimes, our assembly goes wrong. The foundation may be solid, but the walls become crooked. We start with a false assumption (or a whole slew of those little suckers acquired over a lifetime) and they make the whole structure — our whole life — wobbly.
We feel that wobble in our bones: the self-consciousness, the shame, the “not-enoughness.” When this happens, you have to do the hardest thing imaginable: You have to go all the way down to the foundation and start again.
The Exhaustion of the “Prop”
For years, many of us live in houses with leaning walls and we spend an incredible amount of “Life Energy” just propping them up. Imagine standing with your shoulder against a leaning brick wall, terrified that if you step away to rest, the whole thing will come crashing down.
That is what it feels like to maintain a false identity. We aren’t exhausted from living; we are exhausted from holding.
An additional reason we do it, beyond trying to save the home where we live, is because we assume there is a crowd of people watching us, judging the curb appeal of the house, watching our struggle.
But the truth is, the yard is empty. In this life, you have an Audience of One. When you realize the only “Inspector” who matters already loves you and the land you’re building on, you can finally stop propping up the lies and let the crooked walls fall.
The Debris of a Thousand Lies
Why is it so hard to see the proper blueprint for our lives? Because we live in a world saturated with information—and by extension, saturated with lies. We are drowning in “too much”: too many opinions, too many comparisons, simply too much noise. We live in a world that defines us by what we do, not who we are. We are defined by our job, by our family role, by what we do for others, by how much and how well we produce.
Every lie told to us by the world has a kernel of truth at its center. That’s what makes them so sticky; so hard to shake off. A lie might tell you, “You are only valuable if you are productive,” which hijacks the divine truth. There is no “if” in your value. You have a purpose and to find your true identity, you have to peel away the layers of global noise to find that spark of perfection—the God-spark—hidden underneath.
You have to dig through the debris of what the world says you are to find the kernel of who you actually are.
Lessons from the Cabin: The General Contractor’s Burden
I know this process intimately because I am living it right now—not just spiritually, but physically. I’ve been expanding the footprint of my own cabin.
I’m not just building for “more space.” I’m building for sustainability and joy. I’m making sure I can live on a single floor, creating a home that supports me even when I can no longer climb steps. I’m building for a version of me that hasn’t arrived yet, but deserves to be cared for.
But I will admit that the rebuild (both spiritually and physically) is a mess!
Being the General Contractor of your own soul is quite similar to that same title on a construction site.
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The Delays: You think you’ll find your “truth” in a weekend sabbatical, but the “plumber” of your soul doesn’t show up.
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The Overruns: You think deconstructing one false belief will be “cheap,” but it costs you old comforts and social circles you weren’t ready to lose.
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The Timeline: The electrician tells you “two weeks,” but eight months later, you’re still sitting in the dark, waiting for a light to come on.
Scraping the Mortar
When the walls are crooked, you have to scrape off the old mortar. That mortar is made of your past experiences that you’ve labeled as “bad” or “wasteful.”
To rebuild, you have to reprocess all that grit. You have to realize those “bad” experiences were actually “lessons.” Fresh mortar isn’t made of perfection; it’s made of grace. It’s the realization that you have all the proper materials. You just had to take the building down to the foundation to ensure that the home you inhabit for the rest of your life is one of peace and growth and joy. It’s not a theatre, there is no audience and life is not a performance.
The Porch of Peace
Expansion is painful. Whether it’s adding a bedroom to a cabin or adding the ability to “receive” to your heart, the construction phase is loud and dusty.
But one day, the contractors leave. The noise of the world fades. You find yourself on a single floor, moving with ease, no longer straining to climb steps that don’t serve you. You sit on the porch swing relaxing, not propping up the walls. You can finally enjoy what you have built on that kernel of truth, and for the first time, you aren’t supporting the house.
Your home finally supports you.
