Responding to life

By Jeff Becraft

I am building a storage shed in my backyard.  I am being trained by this guy in a blue shirt off of YouTube University. I watched a bunch of videos and I finally picked this guy and I am going with his system. He is actually a pro and not just a DIY-er. He is also kind of fun to watch as well.

In building the floor frame for this building, he recommended to use more than just nails in connecting the joists, but also to use structural screws.

I’m telling you… those structural screws are no joke. They can close the gap between any two pieces of lumber. And I didn’t even know what a structural screw was; I learned about it from him.

When I got the frame together, the next step was to get the plywood down for the flooring. That would really hold the whole flooring system together and would keep everything square.

But right at that time is when I got the phone call that Dad was heading to the ER at the hospital (and I have described all that in the last few emails). I left town and was gone for quite a while.  And I don’t regret any of that.

Through the pressure from the structural screws (they are no joke) and the exposure to the weather, every single joist in my frame warped.

It was Chuck Swindoll who said life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% of how you react to it. So, I have been spending some of my free time lately putting in two-by-four spacers in between the joists to straighten them back out. Now, this is a job all by itself; sometimes you can straighten out one joist and then it winds up pushing out another joist. But I am almost finished with that task.  And when I am done, the floor system will be even stronger than it was before.

I have said before that a lot of construction is figuring out how to fix what just went wrong (at least for me).

There are times in life where things do not go the way we think they are going to go, or they are not going the way they should go. Pressures from life and exposure to various circumstances can warp how we thought things should go or should be.

We have to make adjustments. That is where we are going to spend 90% of our life – making adjustments. Responding to what has happened. And so it is a good thing to approach those adjustments with a good attitude and realize that our lives may be stronger after we make those adjustments than if we did not have to make them at all.

Jeff Becraft is the Director of Our Place of Hope and the Director Emeritus for Youth Corps and has dedicated much of his life to helping shift the vision of people’s lives. Our Place of Hope is a paradigm shift for people living with mental illness that encourages them to regain meaning, purpose, and hope for their lives. You can connect with Jeff at  jbecraft4TN@gmail.com.