Trusting God

This week has been a very trying week for me. In a previous post I talked about how, 'if it could go wrong it did,' even now the internet is now working so I am typing this on Notepad. Yes Notepad. Not Microsoft Word. I relied so much on the internet back home I used Google Docs for everything and never saw a need for anything else. Anyway This was a rough week remodeling this place. I screwed up so many time y'all better start calling me Tim the Toolman Taylor. This week I learned alot about trust, and I want to tell you a bit about it. I have a very hard time trusting people mostly because of somethings that happened to me a few years ago. Sometimes this distrust can even creep over into my relationship with God. This story is about how I learned I can trust God no matter what is happening.

This week in addition to hanging more sheet rock I was also learning to tile the shower room. Before I could seal off the final wall and start laying tile I had to run the waterlines for the shower faucet.

[caption id="attachment_581" align="alignright" width="324"] Before I sealed off the Wall[/caption]

I cut the lines measured out the right distance, lined them up where they should be, glued everything together and waited for it to dry so I could pressurize the the lines and see if I was ready to seal in the wall. Well after all that work i noticed a small leak. One of the pipes didn't seal. I was a but disappointed but told myself "these things happen, better fix it now rather than later." So i fixed it taking extra care to make sure everything was glued properly. this time everything lined up really nice and I screwed in the faucet so I could test the line. I quickly noticed a small leak around the point where the faucet screws in and thought i needed more plumbers tape. So i unscrewed it and noticed my fatal mistake. There were no leaks but I had cross threaded the pipe. And since all the water lines here are plastic that meant i had to redo the whole line back to the first available point. By this time i was getting pretty mad. I couldn't believe that I messed up twice on the same pipe. I was starting to get mad at God, asking Him why he sent me here. Why am I having so much trouble with this line. After all I have glued hundreds of PVC lines in my day with no issue. (side note use Red Hot Blue Glue, not whatever Ace sells. Unfortunately I cant get it here.) I worked through my anger made my 4th trip to Ace that day, they clerks just smile and smirk when they see me walking up the the register for the third time with the same parts. I went back and glued everything and waited to test it again. I'm sure you can guess what happened. The glue didn't hold again. This time in a place where I had to shut the water off the the whole building to but a new shower shutoff valve in. (sorry neighbors) Needless to say I was livid. I had begged God to just let it hold. I was tired of this. I was falling behind schedule. I NEEDED this to work. I felt abandoned, rejected, and completely alone. I was so angry I couldn't think straight I felt like a complete failure and that I was useless as a maintenance person. I had to take a break so I took some time and did something else. I prayed about it and once I got to a point where I felt better I went back to the job to fix this SAME line for the 4th time.

When I was preparing the line and measuring everything out, something caught my eye. another pipe that I had glued the previous week. Was slowing dripping water, drip... drip... drip... clearly a leak that had just started recently. (Seriously guys never use anything except Red Hot Blue Glue) And it hit me like a Semi truck to the face. If the glue had held the first time, the second time or even the third time, I would never have noticed that leak. I would have sealed up the wall and in a few months when the sheet rock started to mold fall apart, I would have to tear out the wall, possibly even the tile and start all over.

I learned a real lesson about trust this week. If I had trusted God, that he put me here for a reason. I could have avoided all the anger that went along with my screw ups. I learned that God can see the whole picture, He knows the future, He knew that pipe would start leaking when it did. Psalm I39:16 says, You saw me before I was born. Every day of my life was recorded in Your book. Every moment was laid out before a single day had passed. I believe that God was trying to show me two things. One that I need to put my faith in Him no matter what is happening. And two, that He knows the end from the beginning, and no matter whats happening He's got it. I did finally finish laying the Tile. More picture to come.

[caption id="attachment_582" align="alignnone" width="4048"] All done with the Tile[/caption]

“Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord, whose trust is the Lord. He is like a tree planted by water, that sends out its roots by the stream, and does not fear when heat comes, for its leaves remain green and is not anxious in the year of drought, for it does not cease to bear fruit.”  ~Jeremiah 17:7-8