Sometimes, grace is apparent. My sobriety is a good example of grace. My children. My parents. My boyfriend. Friends. My job. I am one of those people who have a lot of grace in their life. And I am grateful, every single day.
Last night I got another opportunity to appreciate grace on a new level. It is not easy to see all the others all the time. People in meetings annoy me. My children are well children (worse yet teens) and make me crazy. My parents are a source of joy almost always as is the boyfriend. But there have been moments with each of them that have fallen way short of feeling the grace that is present. Friends and jobs too.
For the most part though, I feel and see and experience the state of grace that I live in every day. I feel it and live it. I really do walk around feeling blessed and favored so very often. And last night I got to experience a new variation of grace...
I live in a house with one bathroom. It isn’t all that hard and we have all adjusted. Unspoken rules have been promulgated. We navigate the small but vital room with an appropriate level of deference and gratitude.
So it was with some concern when the toilet started to cause gurgling sounds in other water features in the home. One would flush and there would be odd sounds coming from the bathtub, kitchen sink etc. And it was concerning, so much so, that my automatic response was to ignore it, praying that prayer one reserves for things that one fears will be expensive and well, smelly.
Over the course of a few days the sounds were getting worse and finally reached a decibel that was no longer really ignorable. Boyfriend recommended calling a plumber. I delayed because I knew that it would be expensive. But then I realized that the way things appeared currently, expensive was going it just be the cost and my delay was really the only thing standing between a bathroom that was not full of shit. I called. And they said they could have someone out in an hour. Thank you Universe!
A very nice man showed up and asked where the clean out was. I told him and was quickly shown that the sewer system was already failing. Just outside my bathroom window, evidence was literally leaking everywhere that there was a rather intense problem growing larger with every flush.
The plumber had me flush the empty toilet and that is exactly when it failed. Water seeped from the base of it and ran all over the floor. Clean water. Unused water. Still toilet water but it was debris free if you know what I mean.
I immediately was wiling to pay whatever price was needed to resolve the issue. And I was filled with the kind of gratitude that one is filled with when the only toilet in the house fails WHILE THERE IS A PLUMBER ONSITE!
Several hours and thousands of dollars later, the problem was resolved by two very nice plumbers who worked diligently and efficiently to resolve my, well, personal toilet crisis. They did so late into the night, without complaint of the very cold temperatures and lateness of hour. And in the end, all is well, the problem resolved and the toilet restored to its previous functionality. And they guarantee their work!
I know it may sound somewhat eccentric to be grateful for angelic plumbers, failing toilets and boyfriend’s with common sense. But I am. Grateful to be $2275 poorer if it means that I didn’t have to experience the backup of raw sewage into my home. And I didn’t. And I think that kind of gratitude is blog worthy. Lord knows I have written about a lot of less worthy endeavors.
So thank you Paradise Plumbing! Your guys were amazing and worth every penny. Thank you for saving me from a fate that just might be worse than death.
Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!
Thank you to my partner for helping me remove the fear blinders and just make the call that I knew would be expensive but in the end saved us a really shitty situation.
Thank you for my saving nature that I had the money, I am sure I would have rather spent it on a helicopter ride in Hawaii but not really. I am immensely grateful that I did not have to experience what was about to happen, and would have happened with just one more flush!
And so as I move forward in this life, I get to experience new levels of grace. Sometimes under fire, or pressure and last night with the very real possibility of shit soaked.
Lessons are everywhere all the time, I think trying to teach us the same thing: we are lucky to be here. We are given lots of signs and we frequently find ourselves showered in shit because we couldn’t or wouldn’t heed the gurgling signs along the way.
Today I am grateful that I was able to alter my Ostrich like habit and just deal with the issue, head on (haha - yes I intended that pun). And I was aptly rewarded by the absence of having to wade through shit...literally.
I like the grace moments that are more sublime. But I am developing a new appreciation for moments like last night when I am saved at the moment right before everything craps out. (I can’t stop now). Seconds and inches. So much of life is altered by seconds and inches. And last night, grace entered with a flush and rush. I am grateful for those who answered the call and spared me what was to come.
I hope that I may never stop seeing all the many odd gifts of grace in this life...be they one day or flush at a time. Again, I have done my fair share of praying to porcelain Gods, and apparently that isn't completely done...
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