Everyone Needs a Cabin

I was looking for a photograph in my LightRoom library the other day and ran across this picture I took last March when we were home in Colorado.



I grew up sharing a room with my older brother and by the time I turned fourteen I decided I needed my own room. Even though we didn't have an extra bedroom in our house, in a moment of ungrateful, junior high attitude I felt like my Dad needed to do something about it and get me my own room. In addition to many life skills, probably the three main character qualities that my dad stressed during my childhood were, responsibility, integrity and obedience and he never missed an opportunity to instill these principles. This scenario was no exception and I remember him looking at me for a second with this perplexed look and then said, "Ok. I tell you what: if you want your own room you can build it." After a few days of feeling like my feelings weren't validated I decided that I would do just that. Build my own room.

I know well the two opinions on John Eldridge and have read many of his books. While some argue his theology and Biblical basis, I've found that he has some wise insight to the way a man thinks. In "The Way of The Wild Heart," a book he wrote as a follow up to, "Wild at Heart," he explains the stages of manhood and says that young men need to be allowed to be "king" and rule over something in their lives. He says that young men will learn about life, natural consequences and responsibility through owning pets, building forts, getting hurt, having a place that is all their own. I'm glad my parents understood this principle and gave me numerous opportunities to take on great responsibility. This is one of the biggest reasons my parents advocated homeschooling and wanted us to learn valuable, practical life lessons.

Anyway, my dad is an artist, creative, and an excellent carpenter and I grew up constantly building and rebuilding projects of various sizes. We had recently rebuilt a deck and my dad said I could have all of the old redwood scrap. After spending a few months drawing up plans (I can't find them, otherwise I would show one to you!) I showed them to my dad, picked a corner of our five acre lot as far from the barn and house as possible and went to work.

Over a process of more than two years I proceeded to build my little house funded from left over material from local developments and whatever I couldn't find, I bought myself using money I earned at dinner music gigs I played piano at throughout Colorado Springs. I insulated, wired and drywalled this the entire 96 square feet and believe it or not spent many nights in it. I heated it with a small antique wood stove that now holds my printer in my studio.

God uses everything in our life for a reason. Even though I was in junior high and this was not whatsoever a life changing event, I ran into a closed door when my dad said I couldn't have my own room. I remember being mad and upset, but what came out of my sweating, bleeding, applying myself, spending much time, money and energy was a lifeskill I don't think I could have learned any other way. I'm thinking now of the mountains in my life now that I really just would rather give up on and say it's not worth it. Is it really not worth it, or is this just a cabin waiting to be built?

This is my Dad's cabin that he built with his brothers in the mountains of Colorado. Every man should have one. There's your challenge: what's the cabin in your life? Go build it.