Before and Afters

by Sarah Hauser

I’m still wiping dust off our nightstands, even though I thought I’d sufficiently cleaned them after sanding down the spackle on the walls. Our bed is pulled out three feet from the side, so I can get behind it to paint. There’s a ladder propped up against the corner of our room, a laundry basket filled with paper towels, a plastic bag with all the outlet plates and their corresponding screws, and two pillow covers from IKEA I still haven’t decided if I’m keeping. 

I thought redoing our room would be a good idea. I’m now having second thoughts.

I’m used to a small pile of clean clothes on our bed and stacks of books on my nightstand. But in the last few weeks, the mess has grown tenfold. Every other room, while often filled with the sweet sounds of baby giggles or kids running through the halls, isn’t exactly restful. And for every note of kids’ laughter, there’s a sibling argument. Every moment of independent play leaves a trail of Hot Wheels cars for the bottoms of my feet to find. 

I just wanted to have one space in our home that felt like an oasis. Enjoyable. Calm. 

***

“I’m going to call our counselor,” my husband tells me. “If you want to join me on the call, that’d be great. Either way, I need to talk a few things out with her.”

I inhale as my jaw clenches. He’s treading carefully. I know it. Last time we talked to our counselor, part of what we discussed was how it’s not necessarily helpful for him to strongly suggest I make an appointment with her. Instead, he can invite me into what he’s doing, but I have to decide for myself if I’m going to join.

I think about it for a moment, then I exhale. “Okay. I’ll be there.” It feels like defeat sometimes, the admission that we need the help, that I need the help. He adds the call to our shared Google calendar, the primary way we seem to communicate these days. It feels like every time we actually talk, we end up arguing or I get defensive or he gets frustrated or the discussion simply devolves. I’m discouraged. I know he is, too. 

***

The bed has been pulled away from the wall now for about three weeks. The paint cans have been sitting in one corner, the laundry basket filled with supplies and decor taking up the far left corner. The new dresser sits in boxes, and now about five loads of laundry lay dumped haphazardly on our bed. So much for a restful space. 

I know there’s hope for our bedroom. I even made an appointment with a friend who does interior design consulting so she could help me figure out the paint colors and make it look at least a little bit nice with the resources we have. I’m learning to admit that decor is not one of my strong suits, and it’s worth asking for help. 

I have a list of exactly what I need to do and what I need to buy. I simply need to do the work. But I hate this part. It takes me forever to get house projects done because apparently even when I’m mid-project, everyone in my family still needs to eat dinner and get new socks and be driven to a friend’s birthday party. 

There’s also not much instant gratification. I want the “after” picture now. I don’t want to spend my time wiping down walls and spackling and sanding and researching and learning and … it all feels like such an ordeal. 

But before and afters require a middle. No one sees that part. No one sees when you’re filling in the holes where the old curtains used to hang. No one knows that when you pulled your bed away from the wall, you found disgusting, years-old dust bunnies hiding behind the legs of the bed alongside an old pair of your 5 year old’s underwear and your daughter's pacifier from at least six years ago. No one knows how much time is spent prepping the walls and cleaning up the junk you found. But if I want the “after” picture, this work is essential. 

As I stare at the clutter taking up nearly every square inch of my bedroom, I sometimes question if I’ll ever finish this project, if this room will always be a perpetual mess.

***

On our counseling call, we talk about life plans and communication and how it’s so maddening trying to make decisions together sometimes. He voices his frustrations, how the words I say and the angry tone I often use feel combative, even downright mean. I hate this about myself. And I hate hearing others confirm this flaw of mine, even in the safety of a counseling appointment. 

I share how I feel stuck sometimes, how I want to make changes as a family and how my husband’s hesitancy ends up making me feel like he doesn't trust me and we’re perpetually spinning our wheels in the mud of our marriage. We talk about other hurts and struggles. I breathe deeply as I try to hold in my tears. Sometimes I wonder, Is this as good as it’s going to get?

***

There’s a layer of primer on the walls hiding most of the old color. I finally got to start painting with the actual paint, not just the primer, although there’s still one section I have to prime. But my husband has to assemble the new dresser first. Then, we can then transfer our clothes from the old, falling apart wardrobe to the new dresser, then disassemble the old wardrobe, and then, finally, I can reach that last section of the wall. It’s a bigger undertaking than I realized at the outset, one with constantly moving pieces and plenty of disorder. 

There’s no space left in our bedroom to assemble the dresser, so he has to take all that to the baby’s room. Now that room is a disaster, too. The chaos expands. 

I look at my list of to-dos, and there are still so many of them undone. Our bedroom has a long way to go, and because of our budget, skill set, and time constraints, this is going to take a while. That frustrates me. I want an HGTV crew to come visit and redo it all in a weekend. But that’s not life, at least not for the average person. We see the finished product sometimes, and we forget what's involved in getting there. Highlight reels make the process seem faster and smoother than reality. But I have to believe even design experts on reality TV stumbled along in their home projects once upon a time. Maybe they’ve even found dust bunnies and old pacifiers behind their bed, too. 

***

I don’t want things to be stagnant; I want to improve. But whether with my bedroom or my marriage, the process requires so much to be taken apart and repaired. There’s dust to be wiped up and resentment to be swept out before anyone will notice anything has changed at all.  Sometimes in this middle part, in the hours spent sanding and priming, arguing and making counseling appointments, I grow discouraged. I feel stuck. Because I forget that maybe I am making progress, maybe we’re making progress. You just can’t see it yet. You can’t yet see the fruit of cleaning up what was once hidden and taking apart what was no longer working.

I supposed this is the way it goes. The process gets messier before it gets better. But that’s where change and growth happen—in the moments behind the highlight reels, in the long hours between the before-and-afters.

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Sarah J. Hauser is a writer and speaker living in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and four kids. Through theology, stories, and the occasional recipe, she helps others find nourishment for their soul. She loves cooking but rarely follows a recipe exactly, and you can almost always find her with a cup of coffee in hand. Her first book, All Who Are Weary: Finding True Rest by Letting Go of the Burdens You Were Never Meant to Carry (Moody) releases in April, 2023. Check out her monthly newsletter or find her on Instagram.

Photo by

Jennifer Floyd

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