Finally, a post that isn’t just an old man reminiscing about ‘the good old days.’ 

The story begins on a Friday night. We didn’t have the Grands that night, which was unusual, but we went to bed around 10pm. Being an old man, I have an alarm that goes off every night at 10 telling me to take my pill. I did. No strangeness. We went to bed.

My wife woke me up around 6:00 in the morning. In a whisper I hear, ‘Ray, we don’t have water.’ 

I’m up…I’m awake…I’m putting on pants and rubbing my eyes. I really WANT to be awake and alert, but in reality I’m still half asleep. (This would be foreshadowing of excuses that I need to tell myself.)

The first thing I do is walk around the house listening for water. Actually, the first thing was to try the bathroom sink, as if she was just magically wrong. After that I looked around for puddles. Then I head to the water meter. It is completely filled with muddy water because we got almost 5 inches of rain the day/night before. (Horrible flooding in town, but at my house it was just a day of watching the ditches overflow.) I can’t see the meter, but I don’t ‘hear’ anything that sounds like rushing water, so I’m not as worried. 

I go to my mom;s house next door and grab her water hose. I turn on the faucet and pull the trigger on her garden sprayer. It acts like it might want to spray, then nothing. 

Blessed relief. 

I walk back into the bedroom shedding my work clothes and climb back into bed. ‘Mom’s out too, must be a general outage. I’m sure they are working on it.’ The adrenaline rushes away and almost instantly I’m back to sleep. 

I wake up naturally after an hour and half of good, deep sleep. The water is still out. 

I pull out my phone and scroll scroll scroll on some Facebook. There is nothing there. No one is complaining. No one is griping. There isn’t a single post about our ‘lousy water service.’ 

Panic creeps back in.

I walk around the house and there is still no water rushing and no water coming out of any faucet. I go back to moms house and I notice something that I didn’t catch before. Her garden sprayer has its own valve. I may have actually whimpered audibly at that time. I knew, before I even tested it, that I had screwed up. Her water was fine.

Crap…crap…crap….crap….oh no…oh no…oh no…what did I do?!?!?! Water!!…turn off the water…bail out the meter….I need a wrench. I may pass out…how long has this been running.

After I bail out 10 quarts of water from the meter I can see that thing spinning like a 45 album. I’ve never seen that particular dial move, much less spin like that. I turn the water down to ‘almost off,’ and head back up to the house. My thoughts tell me that if I turn it all the way off, I won’t be able to see where all the water is going. 

There are no giant sprays of water. There are no huge puddles. The water is not flowing anywhere I can see. It must be under the house.

I grab my coveralls and a flashlight. 10 feet after crawling in under the house I can see it. It is way back there, but it appears that a fitting has simply slipped out. The PVC cement has come loose with age and popped out. 

Yaaaaayyy…..

My beautiful wife asks me what she can do. She offers to call for help. Asks if she can do something, anything. I can’t think of a single thing. It’s all on me. I answer truthfully, ‘Just tell me it’s going to be okay.’ 

I go and turn the water off completely. Grab my knife, some sandpaper, some cement, and a pair of pliers and dive back under the house. 

The corner of the house that has the entrance to the underside, is also the absolute most roomy area under there. It is the only area that you can crawl through. 

 I have to go all the way to the backside, and then halfway down the length of the house. The last 20 feet there is not enough room to even lift up. I’m Army-crawling through thick wet red clay, dragging my materials with me.

The actual fix was pretty anti-climactic. Wipe it off, scrape the old cement out, sand it a bit, glue it, shove them together, twist as best I can…and then rest in the muddy puddle as sweat pours off me. It feels like it’s already 90 degrees and I’m in full length winter coveralls. 

I get out of there, turn on the water and if you have ever fixed a water leak you know this part. I watch as the dial spins like mad while it fills all the gaps, then it sputters a bit…then is the telling part. Did you do a good job? Or do you have to redo everything? 

The wheel stopped!

My coveralls are coated in thick mud and clay. I’m soaked from sweat. It’s time for coffee and a shower. 

With barely enough time to eat some breakfast and catch my breath, I realize that I still need to change the oil in the car before it gets too hot and too humid. 

As I’m lying under the car, watching the oil drain away I start complaining about the sorry luck I have. How long was that water running? Why didn’t I catch it earlier? Why do I not have an access closer to that side of the house? How much is THIS going to cost?

Normally I would wallow in that self-pity state and get mad about the unfairness of life, but today I tried something different. I started playing what if. 

What if this had happened last week when we were 4 hours away on holiday?

What if the leak had been underground and I had to dig up the yard to find it?

What if I hadn’t had all of the materials and tools I needed to turn off the water and fix the leak?

What if…What if I was unable to walk, much less crawl on the ground? 

What if…What if we didn’t have family to call if I couldn’t fix it?

What if it had been IN the house ruining the walls and floors?

What if I had gotten stuck, or snake bit, or spider bit while under the house.

What if….

Suddenly I wasn’t so unlucky after all. 

Suddenly I had a better understanding of what James was talking about in James 1:2-4.  I’ve said it for years whenever someone else was going through something: “Count it all joy!” It’s a little different when you’re the one Army-crawling in sticky, wet, red clay under your own house.

“My Brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that testing of your faith produces patience. But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete,  lacking nothing.“

I’m truly blessed….and lack nothing

Yaaaaaaaaayyy! a water leak!