stopher's stuff - Should We Build an Ark?

Last Monday I said it, and I’m going to say it again.  WOW.  What a crazy week last week turned out to be.  Regardless of all your plans and good intentions, sometimes you just have no control over how a week might turn out.  And that’s exactly how last week was for me.  I went into it with lots of great plans and ideas for following up on previous contacts and leads from the Bridal Show that I participated in last weekend, but a bit of a curveball was thrown my way. 

Typically water is a very good thing.  We use it for drinking and replenishing our bodies, cooking, washing, taking care of our gardens and so much more.  It’s cool and refreshing.  But also at times menacing.  Noah discovered the power of water long after God told him to build an ark.  It had never rained on the earth prior to that time, so he wasn’t quite sure what God was instructing him to do, but soon enough realized the power of water.

This past week we too learned the power of water.  Though it felt like we might need to at time, we didn’t quite need to build an ark, but I will say we could have had a mini regatta in our garage and kitchen.  We had a slab leak.  Thankfully we discovered it before too much damage had been done – the operative phrase being “too much”.  Damage was certainly done, and our lives about to be disrupted for a while.  But it could have been much, much worse.  In the end our entire kitchen floor has been ripped out (there was a huge pond of water beneath the laminate, all over the slab) and we currently have four very large, industrial drying machines working on drying out the floor, walls and under the great big hole that was opened up within our slab.  They are big.  They are loud.  They make it difficult to sleep at night.  But they are working. 

One of my favorite characters in Les Miserables is Gavroche, the little boy who claims he “runs the town”, and that little people are basically a force to be reckoned with.  As all first-time parents understand fairly quickly, little people can have a huge impact on life.  So too can other little things, like openings or holes.  The culprit of our troubles ended up being a tiny, less than 1/8 of an inch, opening in a copper pipe. But that little opening might as well have been a big opening in the amount of water that it let creep out and scatter through the walls, and across the floors.  Until this week I never knew that there were people specializing in doing ultrasound scans of walls and floors before.  I also never knew that there were people who specialized in floor removal.  But I do now.  And it’s actually been quite fascinating watching these different specialists “do their thing.”

In my business, a tag line or marketing strategy that I use is that we sell adventures and experiences to create memories to last a lifetime.  And we do.  Well this week was our own personal adventure.  It’s been an experience that has certainly created new memories for my family that will last us all a lifetime.  We will laugh about it later.  I still remember the year from my youth when the house I grew up in was being added on to.  My parents decided that adding up to our single story house would be better than selling and moving to a different neighborhood.  So the process began, and literally took a year to complete.  It was frustrating for my mother, fun for my brother and I, and yes, VERY neat to watch the transformation.  So too is this relatively minor project in comparison to what my parents dealt with for that year. 

Our journey is not complete, but we are on the good side to recovery.  The problem was identified and fixed.  Now the resulting damage is being undone and repaired.  Will it take a while?  Probably so, but we can deal with it.  At first I was quick to complain that we had no hot water, but then I stopped myself and recognized that in the scheme of things, my water problem was trivial.  There are people all over this world who don’t have the LUXURY of plumbing in whatever they call home.  People that don’t have the LUXURY of clean water near their village or town and have to walk miles each day just to draw water from a well, or worse, a pond, creek or river that is shared not just with other people, but with animals who also drink from it, bathe in it or live in it. 

As a whole, those of us living in North America often can be very spoiled in that we have so much that we simply take for granted.  And that is a big part of why I am going to Kenya this fall.  To not only remind myself of that fact, but also to do what I can to help bring both physical water to the village of Isinon through the well that our church is funding, but also the living water of Jesus Christ.  I am not ashamed to say that ministering to people in His name is why I’m going to Africa.  The trip won’t be a vacation, nor even a research trip for my business – though I certainly WILL learn a lot and get to experience a lot while I’m there.  It will also give me, no doubt, information to come home and share with others. But it will be about transformation – life transformation for me, and for all those on the trip who will be impacted in very real, personal ways in how we approach our daily lives when we return home once again. 

So this slab leak, however frustrating it’s been, really is only a bit of preparation for me as I prepare to go to “the other side of the world” in less than 6 months and experience for myself the stories of those who have gone before me.  The conditions will certainly not be 5-star, and that is perfectly okay.  As I said earlier in this whole slab leak mess, “Thank you Lord for disrupting my oh-so-comfortable life.” 

Until next time,