Everybody (well, some people) loves the way the reclaimed pallet wood looks as
the exterior treatment of the sound booth at The Stone Church, and so do I.
“I want to do that in my house! It
looks great! That looks so easy!”
Greatness however does not come easily. It comes at personal
and often unseen sacrifice.
“You’re telling me that that a wall covered with some planks
from a stack of pallets required sacrifice?”
"Yep! That’s what I’m saying."
Somebody had to have a vision for such a project.
Somebody had to make the phone calls to locate the unwanted
pallets and seek permission to pick them up.
Somebody had to get a trailer, drive to the warehouse, load
and then secure those pallets in the heat of the summer so that they didn’t
litter Hwy 101.
Somebody had to zip each plank on the pallets with a
circular saw.
Somebody had to extricate each nail that was holding the
planks together.
NOT DONE YET!
Then somebody had to chop saw the ends off of each of the
planks so that the ends were straight.
Then somebody had to piece the planks together so that they
looked good on the wall and secure them with screws—all the while ensuring that
they were visibly straight and aligned.
NOT DONE YET!
Somebody had to pick up all of the scrap pieces load them
back in the trailer, haul them to a burn pile, and watch the fire so that it
didn’t all end in disaster.
Perhaps Mae Nunn, a published author and friend, says it
best when she speaks frankly to people who tell her that they want to write a
book. Her quick-witted retort: “You don’t want to write a book, you want to have written a book.”
Do you really want to live a life of an adventurer, or do
you want to have been on an
adventure?
To live as an adventurer is a call to sacrifice more than
you ever expected.
To live as an adventurer is a call to work hard in secret
and in obscurity.
Maybe I can be an adventurer who one day writes a book about
it but in the meantime, I’ll just blog about pallet wood.
By the way: Pallet Wood Project was a team effort that "wood" not be possible without many hands and lots of patience. Adventures are so much more fun with people that you like. You know who you are--you are the obscure, and the ones whom our Father rewards. (Matthew 6)
