The Dumbbell Table Reveal!

Folks, we have a dumbbell table!

It is sturdy, solid, massive, and exactly as I'd hoped it would be.  David is happy with it, which is the best of all.  And it will require its own forklift if we ever decide to move (I exaggerate kind of).

***Update: I finally got some instructions put together!  See those over here.

From the beginning...

...all the way to the end...

...I repeated in my head these two, powerful words:

Epic Fail

***

Why?

***

Why would I, in the midst of striving for something good, in working at something I enjoy, for the sake of one I love, remind myself over and over and over that I was certain, certain to fail?

Do you know, I do this on pretty much every project I attempt?  It isn't always as conscious or as articulate...but it is always just as powerful.  More so, I think, as I venture on behalf of someone else.  I am grateful to have ears to hear it for what it is; an attack on my identity and on my desire to create and to give.  The key to defeating it, I think, is to hear it out and then laugh in its face.

Of course I'm going to make mistakes!  Of course I will fail! And, at bottom,  Of course I am not good enough!  But the one who loves me will treasure this attempt, this paltry thing, this vain struggle...he will laugh with me at the stories it has created...he does not love me because I am a Master Craftsman...but he loves me!

I find my identity in love.  I express my love in what I do, in what I make.  And while I give away what I make, what I am really giving is not a table, a photo, a present with a bow...it is the risk of giving myself, my patched-together, half-designed, half-accidental self.  My dumbbell table self with the cracked 2x4 (I screwed something up, surprise) and the unidentified bits of wood from the Habitat for Humanity secondhand store.  That's me.

So, there you go.

******* Update: finally got around to uploading the file to SketchUp!  Go into their 3D Warehouse and search 'dumbbell table.'  And probably if I were going to do it again, I wouldn't add that bar across the bottom...it looks cool, sure, but (as predicted) it was beastly heavy when we moved.