A Tale of Two Holes

What Ceiling Damage Taught Me About the Wounds We Carry

We had a hole in our basement ceiling about twenty years ago. Now when I call it a hole, I don’t mean to imply that it was nickel or dime-sized. This was a hole—a good two-softballs side-by-side kind of hole. And in this household, holes in ceilings are caused by randomly odd plumbing issues from above.

Our house was built in 1969, you know.

Never much of a handyman (but getting better at the work of hands), I did what any clueless 30-year old homeowner would do in a similar situation. I marched into the local hardware store, bought a vent cover, cut a piece of black construction paper to fit behind it, and screwed the whole thing to the ceiling. And just like that… hole concealed.

Don’t you dare judge me!

I was reminded of that glorious homeowner hack this morning lying on the basement floor, stretching my back and staring at the vent. It had been so long, I had almost forgotten I ever did it.

Which reminds me of another hole in another ceiling, which I have written about before.

This time in our kitchen.

We had just returned from a family vacation in Florida with our two young girls. The moment we walked through the door and turned on the lights, we noticed a basketball-sized chunk of our ceiling had collapsed onto the tile floor. After poking around, we discovered a pipe had leaked while we were gone, saturating the drywall that ultimately gave way to gravity.

And no, I didn’t go buy a larger vent to cover that one.

But we didn’t fix it right away either. My wife was considering a kitchen remodel, so we dried everything out and left the hole there for nine months while we figured out our next move. And you know what’s wild? We stopped noticing it. It became just another part of our daily lives—something overhead we no longer even saw. But every guest who came over? First thing they’d ask about was the hole in the ceiling.

It’s funny what we learn to live with.

Metaphors, metaphors.

This exercise in remembering the holes became a quiet meditation on the wounds we carry—and what happens when we stop paying attention to them. Sometimes we cover them up because we don’t know how to do the hard work of healing. So we hide: behind emotional masks, denial, addiction, performance, isolation. But masking a wound never heals it.

Other times, we just get used to the damage. We stop noticing. We forget it’s even there.

And slowly—almost imperceptibly—it becomes a part of us.

Question

What holes or wounds have I been ignoring or covering up in my own life—and what might happen if I finally face them honestly?

Peace,

Brandon

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