Painting Over Problems

Today since we all have clean clothes and no other major things to do, we're working on some minor repair projects. The vent in our bathroom ceiling needed to be replaced so after a round about with an aging "home repair expert" at Home Depot about how I measured the complete wrong part of the vent to find the right fit and me figuring out the right one on my own, we arrived home.
The vent needed to be replaced because it was rusting. As I was standing on our vanity with my head scrunched against the ceiling trying to remove the old vent, I realized (much to my chagrin) that not only had this vent been painted before, but they didn't skip the screws. The paint was so thick, in fact, that there was a hard dried drip coming off one of them. So with my handy screwdriver, I chipped away at the old paint trying to clear out the flat part of the screw so I could take it down. It dawned on me while I worked on this that this is much how we all face life too often. We paint over problems that should probably be repaired. Instead of quitting smoking we buy a smoking jacket and strong gum. Instead of working through marital issues that need to be address we just stop talking. As long as everything appears okay from the outside, it doesn't matter what rust lies beneath. Problem is that rust comes out anyway.
One of the previous owners of this house went as far as to repaint that rusted vent teal! There were at least two coats of white over that (probably necessary to cover the teal) and yet the rust still ate through. So instead of doing a surface job and trying to paint over it again, I took the time and extra energy to go buy a new one. Just struck me that I need to be more intentional about life and make sure that the decisions I'm making are more about what will last then about what my life looks like to other people.