This is becoming my catchphrase, at work and at home. This gets more laughs than the best joke I ever told. I think people don't believe I mean it. But it's not sarcasm, it's true. It's gonna be a great day.
One Saturday in early July I was getting a ton done around the house. As Bob likes to say, I was "TCB-ing" -- taking care of business. Vacuuming, dusting, cleaning hard floors, scouring bathrooms. I took the vacuum apart and cleaned it. I even cleaned out the refrigerator, which included liberal use of the garbage disposal. I was on probably my third load of laundry when I heard the scream, "STOP RUNNING WATER! SHUT IT OFF NOW!"
My heart jumped out of my chest. I screamed back, "I'M NOT RUNNING WATER!" But then remembered the washing machine was running. I sprinted to the thing and hit the emergency stop button. By the time I got downstairs, Bob was standing under a waterfall. This was not good.
We remodeled the basement when we moved to this house and we love it. One of the things that wasn't really possible for us to tackle budget-wise was the drop ceiling. But we could afford to update and replace the 2 x 4 church-rec-room style tiles to a newer style that looks like 2 x 2 squares. Just removed the old ones, repainted the track and voila, a fresh, clean, and pretty ceiling.
Which was now leaking like a sieve.
As soon as we had put down towels and the water stopped pouring out, Bob got on the phone and started calling. I think we both knew that the odds of getting someone out to the house was going to be next to impossible. After all, Saturday. We figured out what sinks and toilets we could still use and agreed, no laundry and no dish washing in the kitchen sink until fixed. We made the best of the rest of the weekend.
Monday plumbers came. The cut pipes, ran snakes, cut into ceilings and they thought they had it fixed. They told me to fill the kitchen sink up with water and we'd test it. Meanwhile one of them was planning to put some drain cleaner down the sink and I was on the hunt for a funnel. This took me to the basement where I found the second waterfall. This time with the ceiling tiles out it was just pouring straight onto the carpet. I screamed to the guys upstairs, "IT'S COMING OUT!!" They came down to the basement and just stood there looking up like the disciples at the Ascension. I ran and got a cooler and shoved it in one guy's hands. I grabbed buckets and trash cans to put under the flowing water.
That's when the plumbers gave up. They called a septic tank company they recommended, packed up and were gone in 5 minutes flat. The next day was the 4th of July. Wednesday was the soonest the septic tank people could come and that was IF they could fit me in. For those keeping score, this would be 5 days with no washing machine, washing dishes in a tub and dumping the water outside, and showers only in the basement. We kept saying "at least we HAVE a shower in the basement."
Wednesday came and the septic truck showed up. Turns out there were two giant blocks in the pipe coming from the house to the septic tank. They pumped it out, cleared the blockages, and said they'd send a bill. Gulp.
Believe me when I tell you that the first time I started the washing machine I kept running to the basement to make sure it wasn't leaking again. And also here's a hot tip: if you have a septic it is not recommended to use a garage disposal. Bob had told me this before but I ignored him... After all, why do they install them in the first place? I groveled pretty big when I told him he was right.
As part of this whole fiasco we had to pull the toilet up in the main floor bathroom, replace the seal and reinstall it. We can do this. Only take that seemingly easy-sounding project, make it take 5 days, figure in multiple runs to multiple stores, add a few tantrums, and you've about got the idea of how this went. We should just refer to this as we "Bob-and-Polly'd" it.
A week or so later we cut new ceiling tiles and put them up, swept, dusted, got the basement put back together and were feeling pretty proud of ourselves when we got hit again.
The lawn mower broke. And we're not talking a DIY repair. Massive, full-on failure. The axle broke. Bob had just started on the back of our 3 acres and had maybe three strips done when it gave out. I walked out in the yard with Bob to check it out. How were we even going to move it to take it somewhere? I think at this point we were saying out loud: "why does this keep happening to us?"
Thanks to a kind neighbor, his flatbed trailer, and our four-wheeler we got the dead mower loaded up for Bob to take who-knew-where the next day. We had a sort of plan: under $X to fix it and we'd fix it, over $X we buy a new/used one. But in our hearts we knew it was going to be over. It was. Bob's excellent negotiating skills and some inheritance money got us a used zero-turn mower that actually cuts his mowing time by 60%.
I might be missing another couple of drama-inducing events, but you get the idea. Stuff keeps breaking, we have to keep making expensive decisions, work is hard, and we're running out of stamps. One finds oneself thinking/saying, "Hey, God, I thought you loved us."
It's no coincidence that I'm reading a book called "Interior Freedom" by Fr. Jacuqes Philippe. This book is a game changer, particularly for a worry-wart like me. I'll share three quotes from it.
First:
By accepting the sufferings "offered" by life and allowed by God for our progress and purification, we spare ourselves much harder ones. We need to develop this kind of realism and, once and for all, stop dreaming of a life without suffering or conflict. That is the life of heaven, not earth. We must take up our cross and follow Christ courageously every day; the bitterness of that cross will sooner or later be transformed into sweetness.And this:
We also have to admit that difficulties, however hard they may be, bring not only disadvantages but also advantages. The first advantage is that they prevent us from assuming exclusive ownership of our lives and our time. They prevent us from shutting ourselves up inside our programs, our plans, our wisdom.
And finally:
But if everything seems to be going wrong around us, it is all the more necessary to preserve our freedom to hope in God and serve him joyfully and enthusiastically. The devil often tries to discourage us and make us lose our joy in serving God. One means he uses particularly is to make us worry about everything that is not going well around us.
So. This leads me to, "It's gonna be a great day." Yeah, I think the first times I said it I may not have felt it to my bones (like I do now). The very first time I said it at work a guy laughed so hard if he had been drinking milk it would have come out his nose. Interesting. I turned it into a kind of survey. I pulled "it's gonna be a great day" out in many various meetings, at different times of day, and got pretty much the same reaction. Everyone thought it was hilarious.
Until recently. People's reactions to it are changing. I was asked how I was before a meeting and I said, "Awesome. I's gonna be a great day." He asked me if I was being serious. I said yes, it's gonna be a great day. Even if things go wrong. We're alive and God loves us. He asked me how it was working out for me, and after I thought about it a second I said, "really well, actually. All my worrying never changed anything."
So it's silly, it sounds sarcastic to some people, and it makes people laugh -- but it helps me put my life into perspective. I can decide to freak and cry and get depressed and worry about money and things going wrong. Or I can decide it's gonna be a great day. That sounds like a lot more fun.
Comments
Post a Comment