Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Okay, then...

Excerpt from Chapter 32- Stand At The Cross Roads:  Nine years earlier, when Buddy came out to doze our driveway, I'd asked him to also clear out a notch on the hilltop. That spot was designated as the site for the Cross Roads chapel, which at the time was to be the first building we constructed. As our plans continuously morphed, building the chapel became a dream for the future...


I knew that Pat had been thinking about building the chapel for quite a while. Every time we attended a worship service at a different church or chapel I could see him counting heads, measuring walls, and figuring costs in his mind. He is so quick with numbers that I frequently joke that he’s my personal calculator. But now he was treading on sacred ground, planning to design the chapel I had dreamed of for so many years. My defenses flew up.
            "I’m not sure the chapel will fit on that spot without more dozer work," he said. "Not if we plan to fill it with a couple hundred people."
            "Well, it should. We planned for it when we dozed the site."
            "It’s better to plan big, scale down later, if necessary. I’ll look at it."
            The size wasn’t our only point of contention. The beauty of cedar siding or the easy maintenance of HardyiPlank? A trendy tin roof or composition shingles that were guaranteed to keep the interior cooler and quieter? A tile floor, carpet, or stained concrete? Square windows? Rectangular? High or low? Agreement did not come easily between us, and after all, it was his money. But it was my vision. The ghost of that perverted adage about the Golden Rule kept poisoning my mind



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