My friend and I spent the night talking about her recent foray into deconstruction. She spent the last few years tearing down all of the institutions, assumptions, go-to’s, absolutes, and assurances in her life. If she’d previously believed it, she knocked down the wall. If she’d grown up being taught about it, give her a sledgehammer.
But lately she’s taken a step back to look at her life, and she sees an empty lot.
And she’s realized that an empty lot is the reasonable outcome of deconstruction—everything in pieces, nothing to shelter you from the storm.
Tonight she said she’s decided to stop all the tearing down and start building.
Too often, people do all the demolition but forget about the building. They reject the way their parents parented but don’t search for a better way themselves. They kick out-dated, irrelevant religious traditions to the curb but don’t replace them with meaningful avenues to God.
And they find themselves looking at a blank life-one with no safe-places, no anchors, and no enduring passions.
But it doesn’t have to be like that: people can build again, this time with the wisdom gained in the demolition.