One Thing Led to Another...

This past weekend was pretty "memorable". It started off on Friday afternoon when I decided to accompany a friend who wanted to check out a dog-friendly park/cafe in Sydney. While at the park, Buddy (our Labrador Retriever) decides to take an unexpected swim at the canal that runs along the side of the entire park! I run over to get him and to my horror, the sides of the canal (which are completely made of concrete) slopes down about 5’ at a steep angle! I’m semi-panicky, but Buddy is not even fazed; he’s just having a yabba-dabba-doo-time swimming in the dirty water.

Thankfully, an older gentleman comes over to help. He reaches over and is able to grab Buddy by his collar. But as he tries to pull him up, the collar comes off and Buddy is back in the canal! The little rascal is too fat to be rescued! Then these two younger men rush over, one of them holds on to the edge with one hand, puts his leg over the edge, and grabs Buddy by the back of his neck with his other hand and pulls Buddy up to safety. Buddy thanked everyone around by spraying dirty canal water on us as he shook himself off!

However, the drama continued as soon as we got home. After giving Buddy a quick bath in the backyard, we noticed that the hot-water tank was leaking. So we turned it off and said, “No worries. We can call the plumber tomorrow (Saturday).” Tomorrow came and we couldn’t get a hold of our real estate agent whom we had to notify first. She was at an auction selling a property and wouldn’t be able to get back to us until she was done. To make the story short, the earliest that a plumber could be scheduled to come was Monday.

Still, the fiasco didn’t end there. After dinner, we were cooking some food for Sunday’s lunch for our church gathering and, forgetting that we didn’t have hot water, Jim drained some beef fat down the sink. He doesn’t tell me this important fact until later when I was about to do the dishes and realized the sink was clogged due to the fat that had solidified in the pipes. We plunged it, poured hot-boiling water, plunged it again, poured Drano, and plunged it some more with no success of unclogging the sink. We were stuck with dirty dishes and pots piled up on the kitchen counter. And the cherry on top of the icing of this disaster-cake was that we had to boil some water over the stove to bathe ourselves.

Thankfully, the chaos was over by Saturday night. The next morning we had a wonderful time of devotion with our Harbour City Church members; and though served with plastic plates, cups and utensils, we had a nice, tasty and warm lunch. The plumber came early this (Monday) morning and everything got fixed. Call this series of events what you may: Domino Effect, Cascading Failure, Chain Reaction, or Butterfly Effect. The important fact is that the end result was still a triumphant victory. God ALWAYS sees us through, even in trials that seem petty and secondary. God is good!

Have you ever had a crazy weekend like that?