I don't know whether it was the right thing to do or not, this work that I"m having done on the kitchen exterior. My kitchen is a shed-type addition to the house, and it's bloody cold. You can sit at the kitchen table with the draft whistling around you, and if I don't leave the under-sink cupboard doors open, the pipes freeze routinely.. The exterior paint is flaking (as is the rest of the house) and I wanted to get a start on siding the whole place. So, killing two birds with one stone, I'm getting the kitchen wing insulated and sided, even now.

Thus far in my new life, any money I've spent on the house has either been under $500 (redoing two rooms) or absolutely critical no-questions-gotta-do-it (re-roofing the garage, which was desperate). This is the first time I've actually had to make a good-sized decision on what I could or should (as opposed to *must*) do. And then there were technical questions: do we use a house-wrap over the insulation or not? My very good and trustworthy carpenter says "don't need it'; my friend the housing expert says "good idea". I plunked for using the stuff. I was probably wrong.

For the first time, I'm acting as an independent householder, taking on a new level of power, exercising my options, making important decisions, as I never had the freedom to do before. It's scary. I wish I had someone to make these choices for me; I'm not sure I like this responsibility. This is a lonely place to be in, one where I have no real sense of competence. I could, after all, decide *wrong*. I feel like a young 'un turned loose in the Big City: the possibilities are large, but I'm so ignorant; how can I know what's best?

The answer is: I can't. Only years from now will I be able to look back and say, "yes, the kitchen project was a good thing, and the house-wrap was okay, even if it probably wasn't necessary" or "the kitchen project was a good thing, but I really shouldn't have gone for the house-wrap" or "the kitchen project was a mistake; I should have saved the money for something else." I can't know that now. And yet, I have to make the decisions now.

But on the other hand: I do make decisions--important decisions --in other aspects of my life, trusting in God's guidance to put my feet on the right path and comfortable with my ability to choose and choose reasonably well, if not always perfectly. I can make these decisions more comfortably now, because in the past I struggled hard in these areas, as I'm struggling now in the area of home repairs and money. With practice comes a sense of authority and freedom that has nothing to do with self-righteousnes and everything to do with mere competence.

And, I think, so it is in spiritual things, too. To accept Received Truth in its simplest black and white, to obey it blindly, without thought or question, and to pass it on unaltered--this may be a very safe way of operating. It takes no risks. You can't go wrong that way. On the other hand, how are we to build our own spiritual strength and competence, our ability to deal with the unexpected and make decisions comfortably and well, if we have no practice in decision-making at all? How can we go right if we have no practice going wrong?

We are saints in the making, and we can't be in the making unless we have freedom to err and stray like lost sheep. God gave us free will for a reason, as costly a gift as it seems sometimes to be. If I had that wonderful Ideal Outside Observer supervising my finances and saying "spend here, don't spend there," then I would learn nothing. I would not develop my (horribly weak) money management skills. I would exchange competence for safety. I have to do this stuff and learn in the practice, just as I learned the fine arts of egg-poaching, driving on thruways, and forgiveness. When we use the Word to insulate ourselves from the reality of pain and humanity and complicated choices, we flatten out the world just a little. And I don't think that's what God had in mind.

I think God, unlike the Canadian climate, tends to be really pretty forgiving of our failures, so long as we've tried as best we can to make our decisions in keeping with the Great Commandment. I think God would rather have us be loving and wrong than unloving and correct (if it's possible to be unloving and correct, which may be a contradiction in terms). I think God calls upon us to be spiritually competent people, who always remember (as all truly competent people always do) that we don't, in fact, have all the answers and we may sometimes be wrong. But the competent aren't paralyzed by that knowledge; they have the confidence to be sometimes in error.

Of course I haven't taken a stupid risk: this project isn't a large one, and I know I can trust the guy who's doing the work, just as in my pilgrimage, I pay very serious attention to Scripture and Tradition as well as Reason. No point reinventing the wheel or taking dumb-as-a-sack-of-hammers risks after all... But also, the risk-taking itself is an act of trust in God. In this case, the risk is small and limited; I'm not ready yet for Really Big Risks. But it's a start, one small step forward--a piece of growing for me. The decision itself may be right or wrong; but the growing part is right. Of that, I am quite sure.

(for Clarke Garrett)