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.
---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
Support by check or money
order may be mailed to
Miles Chapel CME Church
P O Box 132
Fairfield, Al 35064
