Some noise is to be expected in neighborhoods during the summer when people are making home improvements. I'm all for home improvement - my husband and I have remodeled two of our own from top to bottom and seen the payback in big ways - but the noise generated by this project can best be described as long fingernails going down a chalkboard for six hours/day - at 100 decibels. (It actually sounds like a front-end loader using its metal scooper to scrape large rocks.)
This started last summer and went on for three months, five days a week, six to seven hours a day. We thought he might be finished, then it resumed several weeks ago, except that sometimes he starts in the 7 AM hour (which, I'm told by the city, is within the noise ordinance). Yes, he's meeting the allowable hours just fine, but surely there has to be some exceptions for affecting the quality of life of those around you, managing the length of a disturbance, or for huge scraping sounds that keep neighbors from opening their windows, sitting on their deck or taking a walk. But apparently, there are not. Something about not holding up in court.
We've tried talking with the homeowner, investigating it with our homes association, and filing a claim with the city. But because he's improving his home, has a permit, and is doing it within the allowable hours, his need to increase his home value trumps my ability to work at home in peace and quiet. So at some point you have to surrender and say, "Okay, they win. Nothing else I can do. I'm just going to have to tolerate it and learn to work despite the assault to my ears."
Then it occurred to me how much time I had spent trying to fight something that I was never going to win, and getting worked up about something over which I had no control. Just like much of the rest of life, huh? So I decided to abandon my previous plan to put speakers on my deck and blast them with KLOVE (seems counter intuitive) and just surrender.
Just surrender. Sounds so easy. It's not a word that's used positively in today's culture. In fact, it's usually said surrounded by shame. But surrender is what God calls us to do every day in big and small ways. Surrender our less-enlightened will to His much better will; surrender our feeble plans to His much grander ones; surrender our selfishness to selflessness; and surrender our timeline to His perfect clock. And like Psalm 37:5-8 says, it's amazing how that surrender frees up your mind for more productive things like peace.
I've decided that when I hear that scraping, I will fix my mind on Him - use it as a prompt to thank Him for Jesus' words in John 16:33: "I have told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble (or annoyances or inconsiderate neighbors or things you can't do anything about). But take heart! I have overcome the world.” In a strange way, as it gives me peace knowing that God has a good future in store for me (Jeremiah 29:11), it also gives me a little bit of hope that this project will end and the neighborhood will return to quiet.
But I still smiled to myself when it started pouring rain this afternoon and I knew the rock-scraper was done for the day. :-)
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