IKEA-ed to Heaven

A few weeks ago, I figured out how to IKEA my way to heaven. It hit me like an allen wrench in the eye.

We had just moved to a new, big city and my boys jack-potted the small bedroom. 4 feet by 6 feet and just room enough for a new IKEA bunk bed. “Everybody, remain calm.” I said to the kids, whose father was already out the door at his first day of a new PhD program.  “I am your mother. I am pregnant. And by the end of today, this pile of pine will be your bed. Do not touch those bolts.”

I bumped and shoved myself and that bed around for 5 hours. Had this day been post-partum, I would I have lost all the baby belly in sweat.

This is how it went:

End frames: Relatively easy until I realized I did one entirely backwards. Un-allen wrench. Try again.

Side frames: Relatively easy until I kept dropping one end or the other and had to call in my 6 year old to help.  Tighten one end then the other, then back to the first, and so on.

I’m pretty sure I put one or two rails in upside down which means I had to allen wrench a screw into a peg hole a couple of times. It is much for difficult and painful to allen wrench a screw into a shallow peg hole than a deep pre-drilled hole, which may account for my bruised thumbs at the end of the day.

Slats: Relatively easy except for my three-nager supervisor keeping tabs on all the plastic nails not perfectly flush with the slats. “Mom, we have a problem!” he kept calling out, toy hammer in hand.

May I remind you of the 4 feet by 6 feet constraints?

There I was pushing the bed this way and that to slither and contort my pregnant belly into position. I turned that allen wrench with my nose pressed up against the dusty pine, sweat pooling on my brow (and elsewhere) so that when I wiped it from my forehead, it left a mark on the wood wherever I put my hand next–my weakness keeping track of my path for me. And let’s not forget how easy it is to drop an allen wrench.  More pushing and shoving and uncomfortable bending to retrieve IKEA’s favorite tool.

I went around and around that bed for five hours placing, balancing, tightening, then placing, balancing, and tightening again. The bed wobbled and woe-d until the very end.  Tight on one end meant loose on the other for a very long time.  There was no getting around the job except to go around and around and around, tools in hand.

It was uncomfortable, frustrating, and long, but I knew that if I kept at it, by the end of the day my children could rest.  In fact, when I did finish and dress their beds in new linens, my supervisor lied on his bed, kicked his feet in joy and repeated, “Celebrate! Celebrate! Celebrate!” for about five minutes.

Isn’t this the case for all the rest of the work of our souls? No, our works do not save us, but we must absolutely recognize that there is always work to be done and by God’s good grace, he has provided us tools.  His word, His church, His saints.

We are never finished until we are finished.  We work toward the rest of heaven, but until we get there, we will not be resting completely. All we can do is continue on with the tools we know, we retrieve them when we drop them, we place, balance, and tighten the boards of our lives again and again until we really can see the face of the one who saves us from our toil.

“Great are You, O Lord, and greatly to be praised; great is Your power, and of Your wisdom there is no end. And man, being a part of Your creation, desires to praise You — man, who bears about with him his mortality, the witness of his sin, even the witness that You resist the proud, — yet man, this part of Your creation, desires to praise You. You move us to delight in praising You; for You have made us for Yourself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in You.”   

-St. Augustine (The Confessions, Book I)