Journal Entry 14: Leaks of Quality Time
Jesus, if you’re not in it, I don’t want it.
Journal Entry 14: Leaks of Quality Time
Oddly enough I’ve been awaken in the middle of the night/stupidly early morning so many times I think I’m starting to expect it. Can you get PTSD from being woken up to some problem after another? I don’t know, but it feels like it. I was pulled out of a wonderfully deep sleep, again, last week by my wife and oldest son.
My wife and son, Rainy and Reid, immediately began to tell me that a leak was pouring down into Reid’s room.
“Put a bucket under it, and I’ll deal with it tomorrow.” I was still waking up, or better, trying not to wake up. Reid left the room fussing, and Rainy continued to tell me I needed to get up and help. The leak, apparently, was more than I thought it was. Reluctantly, I got dressed, and headed out to see how big of a leak I was dealing with. Spoiler alert: they were right to be panicking.
To catch up on the scenario that was happening allow me some explaining. I turned half our garage into a bedroom. This bedroom was first built to house my oldest daughter who had left home years ago, but ran into some difficulties and needed a place to stay. When she left, my oldest son, Reid, moved into the garage to make room for another guest, Rainy’s sister. The room has been his from that time on. Last week the room got a new edition, a waterfall.
When I got to the garage I found a wide stream of water just flowing down the inner wall of his room on either side. I sighed, went outside into the storm with my annoyance growing quickly. I may have thrown open the door smacking the wall with my annoyance. Soaking wet, tired, and wondering why this had to happen, I got my ladder and climbed up on our very flat roofed garage.
Note: Don’t make flat roofs with no pitch in an area where it rains more often than not. It’s a stupid move, and the owner before me left me with a flat roof over my garage and my back porch. I’ll have to change that, and it will be expensive even with me doing the work.
Honestly, I couldn’t be mad. I could, actually, but I shouldn’t have. I paid for a brand new roof, boards included, for the main house, but not the two flat roofed sections. The roofing company wanted another 4K to roof the two flat areas, and I just didn’t have it. But I knew this time was coming, I’d done my share of roofing and carpentry work to know that both the flat roofs were on barrowed time. The garage roof had finally checked out. Each step I took I could feel weak spots. The roof was doomed, and I had to find some way to save my son’s entire bedroom and my garage.
During this waterfall of an experience, I was, that week, also listening to a good book by John Eldredge, ‘Fathered by God.’ The book is about being a man, the stages of becoming a man of God, and to the point, about going through hardships to grow. Being a dad of sons and a man still in need of growth myself, I was enjoying the book. My son, not knowing the book, was smiling at me on our rotting roof.
“What?” I asked. Trying not to get upset with him. I knew it was not his fault. Yet I was standing in a storm, soaked, dead tired, and knowing I didn’t have the money to fix a rotting rooftop. I was not happy. Then, my son made a comment.
Reid, still smiling, almost laughed his answer. “You said you wanted to spend some quality time together.” He was drenched from head to toe like me, neither had gotten much sleep, but he saw the moment.
I stood there, being rained on, and stared at my son for several seconds. I laughed. “I wanted quality time, you wanted quality time, and God gave us rain.” We spent the next couple of hours maneuvering a too small tarp, some spare shingles, and boards around on the roof trying to stop the leak. We slowed the leak, and the rain eventually stopped. We, together, after having a ‘distance’ between us for the last couple weeks, worked on that roof for hours as father and son fighting the rain.
God’s gifts can be somewhat annoying at times. Yet, through hardships, challenges, and usually times that require a focus on him more than ourselves will bring us something special. Reid and I got what we needed, time together as man and young man, with a challenge. Hardships, though we don’t like it, is a tool God uses to grow us. My house, this family, are challenging, but I’ve grown in my faith and skill each step of the way. I could fall into anger, bitterness, and worse, but I know Jesus is with me and working on me not against me.
Next Day:
$100 later I was the owner of a really large (25’x30’) tarp. With some help from Ryder, my 13yr old son, we got it stretched across the entire garage and part of the inclined side of the house. From there we placed the small tarp, stapled down rows of shingles, and a few more staples. Two days of rain so far, and no leak. We got rid of the waterfall, at least long enough, hopefully, for me to put a new roof on. Another project to be done in this ever aging home, but we’re all learning.
The blessing in all this, if you can’t see it:
1. Due to prior life experiences, other home fallouts, and side projects, I had almost all the material needed to fix the problem. It wouldn’t been a completely different outcome, if I hadn’t had the skill and material to act.
2. Quality time. My son and I, him being 16, are having a hard time right now. We don’t fight, and he’s not a bad kid, but we just don’t laugh and talk like we used to. There’s this strange divide. That night on the roof, in a storm, Jesus brought us together for a little while and it’s helped.
3. Though I don’t like spending money, I had the money for the tarp to truly patch the problem. The bills are paid, there’s plenty of food in the fridge and cabinets, and another paycheck will come around. God/Jesus didn’t give me something I couldn’t take on. The hardship of the task was exhausting, the challenge isn’t over, but it’s not something that can’t be fixed. Jesus has us, and I trust in him.
Life, even for us Jesus chasing Christians looking for a real relationship with Jesus, our life can have challenges. We can either grow bitter and complain, or we can look for the blessing. A life of ease will undoubtedly slow or stop our growth. We grow on hardship and challenges, life lessons. Look to Jesus, listen, find the purpose behind it or at least trust that Jesus isn’t just wasting time.