A Real Mess

 

 

A Real Mess

           Great is our Lord and mighty in power; his understanding has no limit. Psalms 147:5



That title couldn't have said it any better. A few weeks ago we had a power outage. I should point out that we get power outages a LOT! For the past ten years or so of power outages, nothing has really gone terribly wrong. Besides the one winter where power was out for fourteen hours and the temperature in the house dropped to 54 degrees! Yeah, that was the night we all piled up into our bed to sleep.  So, not a comfortable night of sleep.  I love my family, but I'm sorry, the only person I want to share my bed with, is my hubby. Anyway...

We lost power again for about six hours.  It was storming pretty heavily. But life went on as usual and days passed.  We would soon be getting ready to leave for Tennessee for a week long vacation (posting about that later).  The day before, my husband crawls into the crawl space for something and discovers that we flooded!  Are you kidding me?  The power outage kept the sump from pumping and we flooded. But you see, that power outage was about a week ago!  We were leaving the next day (for a week)! We couldn't tackle the project then and there.  So we agreed that we would take care of it when we got back.  The crawl space wasn't flooded at the time. The water that did pool, maybe two inches according to water lines on boxes, had already receded. Aye, aye, aye.

When we returned, I (only me) could smell a bit of mildew.  Ewww! I hate that smell. When we finally had a window of time to work on it, well, let me just say, it was a real pain. Thankfully we had two rolls of carpet padding and boxes to soak up a lot of the water which kept if from spreading. Because of that, all of the wood remained bone dry.  Always looking at a half-full glass!

The job was awful.  Poor Hubby hauled out most everything by himself.  He didn't let me help much at all, unless it was a light bag of trash. He can be so stubborn sometimes, but a gentleman always. I don't know if I mentioned how much I like books.  I'm a bit of book nerd, and, well you probably see where I'm going with this.  I have several plastic bins of books.  Heavy bins of books! I don't know how my husband didn't complain about the heavy book bins. But he didn't. He complained about most everything else, though, if I'm gonna be honest. lol!

This job was awful.  I know I said that already, but it was soooo awful. I lost many Christmas decorations; which didn't really bother me. I'm ready for some new stuff anyway. :) But then...my husband handed me a bag of our daughter's baby clothes. I know you are probably wondering why they were not in a plastic bin like all those stupid books.  Well this plastic bag was one of those heavy duty thick plastic ones. But stupid me, the bottom of the bag had a seam that was not airtight. I opened the bag, stuck my nose in it and walked into my laundry room and cried (people, I'm really not a big crier. So for my eyes to brim over with tears, means my heart is really breaking). Nothing else mattered to me. All my plans of handing over those little treasures to my daughter died.  Her first ever denim jacket, first swimsuit, her 'take home from the hospital outfit,' her Christmas dress, Valentine dress, nightgown, bonnets, and so many others. As I pulled each little memory out of the bag, I noticed that they were all in pristine condition. No green mold or anything growing on them.  Just a mildew smell.  What the heck. I'm gonna give it a try. I threw them in the washer with a cup full of Tide and a cup full of vinegar and I prayed. You know I'm not kidding. I really prayed. When the wash cycle was done, I pulled out item after item and buried my nose in each one, taking in the fresh scent...and then I cried some more! Happy tears! Oh, thank you Jesus, tears!. Our little treasures were saved!!!

Life is a lot like that. Tragedies come to find you. Not just a little flooding, but real life tragedies. Broken marriages, sickness, financial ruin, addictions, mama blues and a plethora of other things.  We get to a breaking point and want to give up. Life, for the most part, will have its messes. You can take notice of it right away and do something about it. Or you can put it off and find that it will most likely get worse. No matter where you are, those messes can be cleaned up.  Those messes can be put back together.  Those messes can be washed away, leaving a fresh scent of newness! A lot of times, it takes just a simple prayer. "Lord, help me with this mess!" It may involve some tears. Tears of sorrow. Tears of brokenness. But after the "storm" has passed, you can count on tears of joy! Once the mess is swept away and the ugly ruined junk is thrown in the dumpster, and the stank is no longer in the air, life gets better.

I wondered why we had this crawl space flooding after ten years of power outages. I looked at this mess this morning....

....and thought about what a daunting task it would be to get it all cleaned up. And then it dawned on me that this mess was a perfect example of life.  It's going to take picking up each piece one by one. Saving what can be saved; marriage, family, self, etc.. And dumping what needs dumping; addictions, worry, depression, self, etc..  It will take time. It will take patience. It will take prayer. But eventually, the pieces will find their way. And a new start will begin!

Tina