This
week the sewage line at our house backed up. It was pretty gross and
our basement smelled pretty foul, but it could have been so much worse.
I
realize that it's strange to be thankful when your sewer line backs up,
and it's not like the smelly event was something we wanted to happen,
but like I said, it could have been so much worse.
Just
a day earlier, I woke up with a sensation I don't normally
have--thankfulness. I usually have to work at being thankful; it
doesn't come naturally to me. Yet, I woke up with the feeling that I
was thankful I had a nice house to live in--one with plenty of problems,
but overall a nice one. As I said, thankfulness is not the feeling I
usually wake up with; normally I'm cursing the alarm and confused about
what day it is. Still, I found myself considering the many people who
don't have the blessing of a place to live in and I felt thankful.
(Maybe
I've just been hearing too much of Band Aid's "Do They Know It's
Christmas" in heavy rotation on the radio station playing Christmas
music. Cue Bono singing, "Tonight thank God it's them instead of you!")
The
day after this mysterious bout of thankfulness, Jen calls me at work to
inform me that she and my younger son went downstairs to the basement
for something only to discover a sight and smell that was grosser than
gross. That was the bad news, but the good news is that we were able to
get a plumber and his wonderful auger out to our house first thing the
next morning. The young man with the auger was amazingly knowledgeable
about sewer lines--I found out more than I ever wanted to know about
human waste disposal, tree roots entering clay sewage lines and remedies
for said invasive tree roots. More good news--our sewer line wasn't
broken and in need of a multi-thousand dollar repair but rather the
augering (is that a word?) took care of the problem. Even more good
news--they were running a special and the bill was $75 lower than normal
(is December a slow month for sewage backups?).
Yes,
the clean up involved lots of steps I would rather not describe in
detail along with a tremendous amount of bleach, but after changing the
diapers of two kids and housebreaking multiple dogs, we weren't
strangers to this kind of work--not really.
Jen
and I discussed how much worse things could have been. This could have
happened on Christmas Day. It could have happened the day after
Christmas when my mother-in-law arrives to stay with us for a week. It
could have happened when we were out of town. It could have happened
any number of times with much more inconvenient scenarios. As I've
already said, it could have been much more expensive. Since our
knowledge of sewer systems is pretty limited, we would have probably
accepted whatever our friend with the auger told us. He could have
charged us way more and we would probably not have questioned him.
Thank you God for honest plumbers!!!!!
At
a different time in my life--okay at many, many different times in my
life--I would have only seen the negative in this situation. I would
have used the backed up sewer as an excuse to back up the sewer in my
mind and spew all sorts of nastiness on anyone unfortunate enough to be
stuck listening to me. I would have fed the part of me who likes to
feel like a victim and play games of "who has it worse?" when in reality
so many people have it worse than me. Instead--with a lot of help from
my wife--I was thankful.
In
theological terms, we call moments like this grace. They are moments
of grace, because when they occur God gives us the insight to recognize
our own blessings and to live for a while within that knowledge. I
believe it is more than merely looking on the bright side of things, but
instead it is a divine gift that we learn to accept or we don't. The
more we do accept such instances of grace the better people we are--the
more thankful we are, the less selfish, the more humble and the less
narcissistic.
Don't
get me wrong, it's not like I live in such moments of grace all the
time. This morning Jen and I sat at our kitchen table splitting a
banana. The banana was new and not quite ripe. I opened my mouth and
out came, "Bananas! They're either too ripe or not ripe enough!" My
wife responded, "Oh yeah, it's a terrible thing to have enough fresh
fruit to eat every day. Shut up and eat your banana." Somewhere in the
distance I heard my mother saying something about starving children in
India. . .
Grace and Peace
Chase
No comments:
Post a Comment