A Flood of Blessings

 The Tuesday before Thanksgiving, our basement flooded.  Our two oldest boys (aged 21 and 17) woke at 6 am to ankle-covering water and began bailing, hoping to clean things up and get the fan going before anyone else discovered the mess.

Happily, it was clean water, not sewage!  Sometime after 1:30, when our oldest son had finished his homework and retired, an old hose broke on the basement washing machine.  It would have been a cheap and easy fix, but it caused a big mess.  It also brought obvious blessings and helped us to recognize many more, enhancing our gratitude this Thanksgiving.  We expect to see additional blessings from this experience as time goes on.

The owner of the restoration company is our neighbor, a grandma who has been wrestling with cancer.  Her daughter was diagnosed with cancer, too, within days of our neighbor's diagnosis.  This friend came to our house about the time her crew arrived -- telling us that she had prayed only the night before that they would get some work for their crew.  "I hate to wish anything bad on someone," she apologized, "but they needed the work."  Our home has had great attention, as attested by the noisy hum of dozens of fans and dehumidifiers, going day and night for more than a week.

Over the past seven years we have remodeled most of the house, but the only basement room to get much attention was the boys' bedroom, completed nine months ago.  We had intended to paint, re-carpet, and upgrade the kitchen and bathroom down there, but there were literally tons of storage and books in the basement that we would have to haul up and find places for.  I have lamented my procrastination many times, but now I am thankful that much has been rapidly hauled out -- including the ruined, ugly carpeting that we will likely replace with tile.  And, at least in this case, the procrastination saved us from doing the remodel twice!

We missed a family wedding that morning and, sadly, some things have been ruined.  A cardboard box containing preschool and grade-school artwork was not salvageable.  A library book will have to be replaced.  The two boys attended Church on Sunday in modified attire:  the younger (whose Sunday shoes have disappeared) wore Grandpa's cowboy boots with his suit; the older (whose classy, leather-soled shoes were completely water-logged) looked like a hipster, wearing a sweater over his shirt and tie -- to go with those upscale Chuck T's.  The extent of the damage to some musical instruments (there was an organ down there) and to the furniture has not yet been determined.  Happily, most of our on-the-floor storage was in plastic bins.

We have seen miracles, as a few notable items were spared.  There was a three-square-foot high-spot in the bedroom, next to the exterior wall -- which happened to be where my son's violin and guitar were stored.  The limited-edition print that was still in its cardboard roll had several inches of packing material in the end that touched the floor -- and the painting was completely dry.  On Saturday night (when they should have been in bed) the younger brother decided to assemble the foosball table, which had lain useless on the kitchen floor for months.  The boys played a game or two, leaving the floor cleared; the six-inch metal foot posts held the rest of the table well out of the way of the coming water.  On Monday evening, while in the basement doing a little straightening of furniture, I noticed that the beautiful, inlaid chess board/drawered table base which the younger son had recently crafted was on the floor; I happened to put the chess board in the cabinet under the television, about five inches off the floor -- and it remained undamaged.

There have been other blessings -- less tangible, perhaps, but no less evident.  As my husband and our younger boys hauled literally tons of food from our basement (the plastic buckets had the weight labeled right on them) and stacked them in the carport, they recognized that they work well together -- and they saw that we have made strides to be prepared for other crises:  it gave my husband confidence, he said, to actually see what we have gathered.   Not being afraid is a blessing!  So is the understanding that stuff is, after all, just stuff.

This experience has focused my thoughts about God's promised floods and about the sometimes-inconvenient blessing of abundant water.  We need these blessings, for without His floods, little would grow.  We live in a desert and we pray for water every year!

Are the hundreds of holes which were punched in the walls a blessing?  I believe so.  I need real work for my younger sons, and filling those holes is something they can do to contribute to the economy of our household.

Was the timing a blessing?  Probably so.  We had already made arrangements to attend the wedding and we had the Thanksgiving holiday to be here working or away to escape the noise.  And the Christmas break will allow time to do the work, if we choose.  What other time would we have selected for the inconvenience?  Like most things, if we could we would choose to procrastinate the trial indefinitely!  Statistically, people experience a water loss about every five years, so it appears we have put this problem off for quite a while.  Yes, even the timing was a blessing.

Gratitude is real, not hypothetical.  Like our lives.

This Thanksgiving, I thank God for a real life, with real problems -- and for real opportunities to see His blessings in my life.


All photos courtesy of sxc.hu, with credit to JoofyTheJi.

Planning Parenthood

Last week, my teenaged daughter returned from a babysitting job with some very determined ideas about parenthood.  Through observing the activities of a young child, she had decided that she does not want a television in her house!

It sounds crazy, no?  This teenager loves to read and enjoys being outside, and she wanted to share quality time with the little boy -- but he had no attention for anything other than dubious programming on television.

Later that evening, as she sat with a vintage reader from her childhood, she commented that she wants her children's lives to be like children had 60 years ago.  "They got dressed up for parties and even wore dresses to play in!  They were kind to each other.  And look -- they worked together!"

Whether or not our future looks like the world of the past, the world we create for our children is their reality.

Interestingly enough, she presently had opportunity to look through photos of herself as a child -- and she saw them with new appreciation.  The world of play dresses, parties, and siblings had all but vanished by the time I was a little girl, but Rose saw and remembered that life had been that way for her.  I like to sew and had provided inexpensive but feminine clothing -- and she had loving siblings who worked and played with her in a variety of situations.  Because her own life has parallels with her dream, she has a frame of reference for ways she can create similar experiences for her future children.

Even with its ups and downs, life has been beautiful for her.  For a mother, that is a dream-come-true.