Water falls on the just and the unjust...

Just as I said last week, Tuesday turned into Wednesday. I LOVE it when things are predictable!

At 10am, most wonderful friends showed up at the church, and we drove up with a 17-ft Uhaul. By 11:30 we were all loaded up with no place to go. Closing wasn't until 2pm. But God.

God is an expert at blessing with most unexpected blessings, and the old owner of the new house texted our agent and said, 'go ahead and move in whenever you want, as long as you're sure you're actually buying the house at 2pm.' As long as I'm sure????? Wild horses from the hills of Yakima couldn't keep me from signing those papers at 2:00!!!!! Pshaw!!!

So we drove over to the house, and everything we owned (minus a few boxes at our friends' where we had been living) was unloaded and put in the right rooms by 1:30pm! God knew my heart's desire was to sleep there that night, and He made it possible. 

We went to our signing all sweaty and nasty--figured they wanted our money, not our good looks!--and then got back to the house in time for a group of angels disguised as ladies from the church to arrive with mops, buckets, toilet brushes and Windex. There was something profoundly humbling about having these heroes of our church clean my toilets! 

And then, because I'm a glutton for chaos, it seems--I jumped in the car and drove an hour north to pick up our new dog. The kids have been longing for a 4-legged friend since we had to leave ours in Kenya, and once we found him...why wait???? That was my thinking, at least!! 

We remembered to feed the kids at about 10pm, and then we realized the boxes left at our friend's house contained the tooth-brushes. Oh well. Don't tell our dentist, but no way was I driving back over for tooth-brushes. We all crashed. Hard. In our own beds, in our own house, with our own dog.

Heaven!!!

Fast-forward a few hours filled with Chad having to go back to the office, kids playing with a new dog, and me unpacking like my life depended on it. Starting to feel organized. As it should be. Chad's parents, Larry and Sharon, drove over with the remains of our things from Raleigh that we couldn't fit in, and I was happily giving them the tour. Proud. Excited. Good-tired.

I had just realized that Omara's hair was still in Sunday's braids (read: hadn't bathed or brushed hair in 4 days) so we ran her a bath in the new Jacuzzi tub, and I was in the basement showing off the concrete "crawl space" that is so nice, Anya is determined to turn it into her own bedroom. And then yelling. Lots of yelling. We went upstairs just as Chad tore out of our room screaming, "Towels! I need towels!!!"

Picture this. 

Jacuzzi tub. Awesome water pressure. Four jets, turned on full blast. Pointed up at the sky rather than down in the tub. Tiny 6-year old cowering, trapped in the middle of these 4 streams of water, unable to turn them off. Water shooting 8 feet in the air, out of the bathroom, half-way across the master bedroom. 3-4 inches of standing water on the tile. The new carpet. Soaking into the new carpet. Dripping through the new ceiling onto the new wood floors below.

With the water turned off, we used every towel in the house to soak up what we could. Ran and met the neighbors super-quick-like and borrowed their wet-vac with which we managed to pull gallons upon gallons upon gallons of water out of the carpets. Punched holes in the new ceiling below to let the water out easier. Chad ranting, "24-hours. We can't even have a nice house for 24-hours!" Me feeling the exact same thing, only curled up on the floor crying to express it. For real--curled up in the closet of our room where I collapsed after vacuuming up as much water as I could manage. Sobbing.

We went out to eat to avoid looking at the water stains or the pans collecting water spread around the kitchen and dining room. When we came home, we all crashed. Hard. In our own beds, in the house we were now responsible for, feeling not-so-good-tired.

As always seems to be the case, God's mercies are new every morning, so we woke up to discover that:

1. the ceiling did not fall, and the dripping stopped. 

2. re-living the memory made us start to giggle, and then laugh, and laughing is always a good thing.

3. I no longer have to worry about the first stain on the carpet or the scratch in the floor. We just went ahead and got that 'new house' feel out of the way with a bang! 

4. I am ok. Even though I'm exhausted, I'm ok. Even though things went badly--very badly--last night, I'm ok. The sun still rises, the sun still sets, I still have my family and my friends, and a new dog who is AWESOME, and a house with a Jacuzzi tub that I might someday trust enough to try out again. 

I don't know why it happened. I'm not saying that God did it...and I'm not saying God didn't do it. These things of active and passive will are too lofty for me to grapple with. But it did happen, so I might as well move on from it with a new life-lesson. And it taught me--very effectively, I might add--that it's just a house. Just a ceiling. Just carpet. I do well to keep my eyes looking beyond the ceiling, to keep my treasures in heaven where water can not stain.