Noah's Wife

I have been thinking a lot about Noah's wife. Not because this is one of the wettest summers we have had in a long time, and not because it dumped buckets of rain on us yesterday and today, even though these would be great reasons to think about her. I am empathizing with Mrs. Noah, lately, because of a building project.

Now, our building project wasn't assigned to us by God. We aren't building a boat. This building project is not going to save our family and two of every kind of thing that creeps along the Earth from the biggest flood ever, and yet I still feel a certain kinship to her.

My husband is building a deck.

This has been a project-in-the-making for almost three years now, ever since he took out our too small, old, too small, rotting, too small, poorly put together one. Did I mention it was "too small?"

I can just imagine Noah's wife's frustration as her yard became the sight of this big project. I can imagine her unable to close the tent flap to her garage because it is full of acacia wood. I can hear her telling her children for the millionth time to be careful in the backyard and not climb on Daddy's project, and that no, she has no idea when it will be finished--maybe not for another hundred years. I can see her eating dinner with her children while Noah walks around the ark, muttering, "I just don't understand. It is the right amount of cubits here, here, and here. But here--it is 1/3 of a cubit off." I'll bet her neighbors wondered if it would ever get done, and I'll bet she wondered if there was any way she was going to be able to STAND to live on it after she had watched the process of making it for so long. I can see her lamenting to Noah at the end of the day when they are getting ready for bed that she wishes they had enough money to just hire someone to build the ark for them.

And yet, when it was all finished, I can imagine the pride she must have had in her husband and in what he was able to accomplish with a stack of wood and some pitch. Just as proud as I am sure I will be of my husband's beautiful deck.

I just hope I don't have to wait a hundred years for it!