Our story so far: We’re waiting (and waiting) to close on the 126-year-old Methodist church we intend to renovate into our home.

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On Black Friday, Tyler got up before the sun did to wait in line at the nearby Home Depot. He arrived back at the rental house before I’d had my first coffee with orders:

“Help me get this thing unloaded.”

The thing was a tool chest. Or, more precisely, another tool chest. If I had a thing for books (and I did), Tyler had a thing for tools. Every time he used one of his tools to fix something or save us the cost of hiring someone to do the work, he reminded me: “I couldn’t have done that without the thingy-whatsit, you know. Aren’t you glad I have so many thingy-whatsits?” Only he didn’t say thingy-whatsit. All his tools had specific names and uses that somehow eluded me. I understood hammers and screwdrivers; I could even differentiate between a flat-head screwdriver and a Phillips screwdriver. But I could never remember the difference between a wrench and a pliers. And God help me if he started lauding the values of various kinds of saws.

All of these various implements required storage (of course—what’s jewelry without a jewelry box?). We might need a screwdriver or a wrench or a pliers (or a measuring tape or a sledgehammer) to transform our church into a house so thank goodness he found a tool box at Home Depot, right?

“It was too good a deal to pass up.”

Sort of like the church, I suppose.

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Tomorrow: Are you as tired of waiting for us to close on the church as we were? Then don’t miss tomorrow’s segment. Read it here.