THE NOT SO GREAT FLOOD

A few nights ago I decided to do some home plumbing, without shutting off the water first.

The shower in the kids’ bathroom leaked, so I bought the thing that goes in the place behind the knob to replace the old thing..  (Hey, it worked last time.)

It was late when I started working and I didn’t feel like going outside to shut off the water.  I know.  I know.  But listen.  I had a plan.

I took off the knob, removed the screws, pulled out the whatchamacallit, and carefully started unscrewing the collar thing.  I was thinking, “I’ll open each part slowly and if it starts leaking, I’ll screw it back in real quick before the water comes all the way out.”

Actually, I was thinking, “Plumber shlummer.  I got this!”

I turned that collar thing one more half rotation and WHOOSH!   The fountains of the earth were broken open and a great deluge poureth forth from the wall. 

Now , when a pipe in the house starts spraying water you can usually stick a bucket underneath and catch the leak while you run out to shut off the water.  Well, that doesn’t work when the leak is spraying out HORIZONTALLY. 

Water was bouncing off the back wall of the shower.  Water was bouncing of the side wall of the shower.  Water was spraying left all over the toilet and the wall behind the toilet.  (I don’t know how the water was spraying left AND backwards, but it was.)  The water was coming out cold, then hot, then cold-n-hot.  And hard as I pushed and twisted, the collar thingy would not go back into place.

My children---my lovely, wonderful, intelligent children---took turns standing in the bathroom door smiling like this was pay-per-view.  So, I had to take charge (again) of the situation and do what any capable man would do in such circumstances.

I yelled, “Go get your mama!”

My wife arrived--- my wife, my rock, my ride-or-die-got-my-back lady--- and she stood silently in the door of the bathroom smiling like this was pay-per-view.

By now I’m soaked in mostly lukewarm water that is still rocketing out of our wall at a thousand pounds per square inch, but I am the man so ---I still got this.  

I calmly directed Sheila to get pliers from the utility room, go outside and turn off the water at the main line in the front yard.  Meanwhile I bravely held back the horizontal flood, shielding the sheet rock with my body.

In a few minutes my wife returned.

“Umm, Babe.  I couldn’t find the switch.”

O.K., so it was about 10 at night and Sheila has no experience fixing pipes or turning off water mains.

“Alright, Babe,” I said (with the calm of a general directing troop movements), “I’ll do it, but I need you to hold this tube right here so the water doesn’t spray all over the place.”

(Yes, I’m aware that water WAS spraying all over the place, but the tube was keeping more of the water from spraying all over more of the places.)

My wife, my love, my got-my-back-against-all-odds-ride-or-die baby, scrunched up her face, looked at me like I was crazy, and turned to walk away.   

See, Sheila had just gotten her hair done. 

If you aren’t familiar with Black women and the issues involved in getting their chemically permed hair wet, it’s like…. well it’s like…..

African-American actress Sanaa Latham played the heroic lead in the 2004 sci-fi action movie “Alien vs. Predator.”  In the movie her character climbed a mountain, sailed to Antarctica, descended 1,000 feet below the south pole in a hole cut by an alien laser fired from outer space, figured out a moving maze in a pre-ice age Mayan temple, defied a group of mercenaries carrying machine guns disguised as brief cases, fought off two different species of superhumanly strong extraterrestrials, defeated a queen alien the size of tyrannosaurus using a spear made from an alien’s tail and a shield made from its skull, and got a face tattoo from a predator alien who used the acid blood from another alien’s dead finger as ink.

You know what African-American actress Sanaa Latham’s character did NOT do in the movie?

She didn’t get her freshly permed hair wet.

Because that would have been too implausible to believe.

“Where you going?” I asked my wife.

“I gotta get something to cover my hair.”

So, while OUR SON held the tube over the leak I ran outside in wet clothes, dug around in the front yard and turned off the water main.

Now you have to understand:   I didn’t mean for any of that to happen.

I knew that I was supposed to shut off the water first, but I thought that could I do what I wanted to do and stop right before the flood came.  I didn’t mean for things to go so far.  And I tried.  I really, really tried to make the water stop, but once the torrent had started I couldn’t shut off the flow. 

Ain’t that the way it always is?

David didn’t set out to cheat on his wife/ wives, murder one of his most loyal warriors, and cause the death of his 1 year old son.  He started that conversation with Bathsheba thinking they would just….  

He should have shut it down at the very beginning.   But he didn’t, and then the circumstances surged and overwhelmed him until he was standing there soaked in sin and blood (2 Samuel chapters 11 & 12).

Abraham didn’t mean to almost pimp out his wife while provoking a plague in the house of a king who’d given him shelter and favor and friendship.  But Sarai was so beautiful, and the other men might have gotten jealous, and it was just a little lie, and then Pharaoh asked for her, and it was PHARAOH, and they didn’t have any friends in Egypt, and what was he gonna do. 

He didn’t shut things down up front with the truth.  So he flooded Pharaoh’s house with a curse and got kicked out of a safe place in the middle of a famine (Genesis 12: 10-20). 

In my work, church and secular, I deal with lots of people who didn’t mean for what happened to happen.  They knew that the drugs, the alcohol, the women, the men, the whatever could be addictive or destructive.  But they were sure that they could calculate when to stop before their life burst apart and the flood overwhelmed them. 

They were wrong. 

We’re almost always wrong about such things.  

When people go too far, we say that they “crossed the line,” but that saying is so incorrect.

There is no line to cross.  

There is no symptom or sign that one more drink, one more puff, one more encounter will snatch away your control and destroy your life.  It just happens.

And once it happens even the people who love you best can’t fix it.  Most of them will have no idea how to even respond.  They’ll just stand there at the edges of your affliction, kinda smiling sympathetically, trying to be positive and empathetic, but not knowing ---- sincerely having no idea ----- how to get you out of the flood.

Your best hope is to shut the sin off at the source beforehand.  If you can quit, quit NOW!  Not after one more.  Not once you’ve finished this time. 

NOWWWW!

And if you can’t….

Rather, let me say,  if you DON’T quit, then it probably means that you’ve already crossed the line that doesn’t exist.  And you need help. 

Get it.  Ask for it.  And if you don’t get a good answer, keep asking until you get somebody who will work with you and help you get into a position to stop the flood from doing any more damage.

But be honest with yourself.  A lot of damage has already been done. 

While the floodgates are open the consequences of your bad choices sprayed all over the place into parts of your life and the lives around you.   The damage will have reached into areas that you thought were well insulated and safely out of reach.

Be honest with yourself.  Clean-up is going to take a long, long time even after you’ve shut down the behavior.

That’s just the way it is.

It took a lot, a loooootttttt of towels to dry  my bathroom walls and floor.  I’ve been sniffing about and  I don’t see signs of deeper water damage behind the walls.   That’s a great mercy we don’t usually get in life. 

In life, the damage always gets behind the walls.

Abraham’s and Sarai’s tendency to lie and take short cuts in their relationship gave birth to half-brothers whose mama-drama created such animosity that Ishmael’s descendants (the Arabs) and Isaac’s descendants (the Jews) are still killing each other over who was really Dad’s favorite.

David’s unwillingness to deal directly with sexual sin caused him to ignore the emotional damage done among his own children, leading to a fraternal rape, a brother-on-brother murder, a civil war started by David’s favorite child, and the estrangement of David from his oldest and most loyal friend. (Just keep reading in 2 Samuel).

Prevention--- shutting it down before you go any further, is the best answer.  But if you’ve gone too far, like Abraham or David ----or me, there’s still hope.

Abraham was redeemed.  David was redeemed.  Both fulfilled their destiny.  Both are listed among the great heroes of the faith.  Not because they suddenly got a lot stronger, but because they ultimately acknowledged their total inability to fix themselves, and they got help----- from God.

They surrendered EVERYTHING to God and threw themselves on His mercy.

Read Psalm 51, David’s great confession.

Read Psalm 72, Solomon’s prophetic eulogy of his father David.  See how they looked forward to Jesus’ redemptive plan.

Don’t stay in the flood.  It’s not going to just stop. 

Get help. 

Without help, you will drown and you will flood the lives around you with pain.

Don’t stay in the dirty, sin-soaked state you’re in.  Surrender to Jesus.  Let him cleanse you.  Let Him repair you.

Let Him help you.

The cords of death entangled me;
    the torrents of destruction overwhelmed me.
The cords of the grave coiled around me;
    the snares of death confronted me.

In my distress I called to the Lord;
    I cried to my God for help.
From his temple he heard my voice;
    my cry came before him, into his ears. (Psalm 18: 4-6)

Remember, Jesus is a trained carpenter.  He knows how to clean out the damage no matter how deep it may have already gotten.

Read Psalm 69

---Anderson T. Graves II   is a writer, community organizer and consultant for education, ministry, and rural leadership development.

Rev. Anderson T. Graves II is pastor of Miles Chapel CME Church (5220 Myron Massey Boulevard) in Fairfield, Alabama;  executive director of the Substance Abuse Youth Networking Organization (SAYNO);  and director of rural leadership development for the National Institute for Human Development (NIHD).

Email atgravestwo2@aol.com

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Miles Chapel CME Church

P O Box 132

Fairfield, Al 35064