Ever had one of those weeks when what's down is up and what's left is right?
It was like that at our house this week. Even the dogs, Lucy
and Charlie, seemed be having the problem.
So what goes down the drain should stay down. Right?
Had some plumbing problems, and we thought they were
resolved.
I went upstairs to straighten a closet, and in the few
minutes I was gone, when I returned
downstairs, I found the washing machine had emptied twice all over the hardwood
floors we installed only a couple of years ago.
I waded to the laundry room, grabbed several beach towels,
fell on my hands and knees, and started mopping gallons and gallons of soapy
water toward the back door.
I didn’t even stop to call Jerry, only kept praying, “Oh,
Lord, don’t let this water ruin the floors.”
A neighbor friend called. I answered robotically, “Can’t go
for a walk--can’t talk--have to keep mopping.”
She arrived a few minutes later with a mound of towels in
her hand and mopped, too.
When I finally had a moment to call Jerry, he came straight
home and went to work unstopping the blockage that had evidently resulted
because of our prior problem.
Exhausted, with the water finally pushed out, and windows
and doors open to let air circulate, my neighbor and I had a few moments to sit just as Jerry turned on the water to a pulsing bulb mechanism he’d
slipped into the plumbing.The pipes bellowed wild moaning sounds.
Soaked to the skin
from the knees down after becoming human sponges, my friend and I melted into
laughter.
The Apostle Paul
wrote, “Even though on the outside it often looks like things are falling apart
on us, on the inside, where God is making new life, not a day goes by without
his unfolding grace. These hard times are small potatoes compared to the coming
good times, the lavish celebration prepared for us. There’s far more here than
meets the eye. The things we see now are here today, gone tomorrow. But the
things we can’t see now will last forever (2 Corinthians 4:17 The Message).
A rainbow of assorted beach towels took two days to dry on
the patio grill—the aftermath of our unfortunate plumbing fiasco. And though
the hardwood floors threatened to buckle at some of the seams, after a few
hours with a fan blowing on them and a little time to dry, they seem to be
calming down a bit.
Someone will probably buy this house one day, rip out the
floors we worked so hard to save and install the latest thing they’ve seen on
HGTV. As Paul said, “…here today, gone tomorrow…”
In the future, I’m most likely not going to remember how
important it was to rescue the floors, but I’ll remember the crazy vibrato of
the plumbing, and the laughter my friend and I shared.
I’m latching onto His unfolding grace and keeping what’s
eternal in my sites even and especially in this upside down, backwards week. Because
Paul’s right, this stuff doesn’t matter compared to what God’s bringing in our
future.
There is one problem, though.
I don’t have any idea what we’re going to do about the dog bed situation.