That They All May Be One: When it Rains, It Pours, Or Baptism Part II

It seems the country is stuck in a weather pattern right now, where the West is suffering from extreme heat, but we’re just getting a lot of rain here. A whole lot of rain. Which, in itself, is a gift from God. Whenever in the Scriptures God has spoken of opening the windows of Heaven and pouring out a blessing, it means rain. Rain makes the crops grow. Rain on a fertile field is income and food. It is God’s provision. The corn is tall, and the 4-H Crops projects look REALLY good this year!

But too much rain is concerning. I mean, ask Noah! Okay, if that’s too hard, read about him in Genesis. What you might notice is that God prepared Noah and his family for the worldwide flood He was about to send by giving him the plans and the command to build an ark of safety, and He also gave others an opportunity to accompany him on the cruise. This was rather like baptism ...

Eric at Ark Encounter

I remember back when I was attending the Spiritual Life Conference at California Lutheran College back in the 70s, with other members of the Luke AFB Chapel. As a teen, I was included with the adults in a workshop on drama ministry, and we put on a skit of our own making that was a take-off on the Peanuts cartoon strip. I was cast as “Suzy,” who was supposed to be Lucy VanPelt. I only remember one of my lines, because it was so very simple. After listening to the Charlie Brown character (“Ricky Smith”) go on and on for awhile in an extended monologue about spiritual truths he was realizing through hard times, my line was:

“That’s ridiculous, Ricky Smith! Nobody would react that way to adversity.”

At the time, I didn’t understand the line because I didn’t know what “adversity” meant. So it was pretty easy to play someone who was using a word far beyond their age level. But Ricky Smith’s part was taking the approach that God can use our adversity to build character in us, to make us wise, to strengthen us, to help others … oh yes – there are many things God can do with us when we are so overcome by our circumstances that we make a little extra time in our day to cry out to Him!

So fast forward back to our current weather pattern. Fortunately, we don’t live next to the Wabash or the Tippecanoe, local rivers which, while they are a beautiful part of where we live, can be hazardous when spring rains decide to cover up your street and isolate you from the rest of the world, or invade your house itself. One year, as I recall, several people lost their homes when they were flooded and then the weather turned cold and froze all that water. The rest of the county heard about our neighbors who had lost everything, and everybody pitched in to donate clothing for the unfortunate families – several tables were piled high in the basement of the Presbyterian church, but they really didn’t need that much!

The only flooding we had ever had over the years was just across our property line, where the Popejoys’ property became a swimming pool, but our yard was high and dry. And our kids will remember a couple of neighbor kids across the tracks, who wanted our kids to put on their swimming suits and enjoy the floodwaters with them at their house, but we didn’t let them. I know, we’re killjoys!

That is, until the new highway came in.

And now, more and more often, the storm sewers are not keeping up with heavy rains, but are causing some of the basements here in Burrows to back up with stormwater, mixed with some raw sewage. It has happened at least five times this year alone. And it costs far too much in maintenance or replacement of basement appliances like furnaces, which have been in our basement here since the late 1800’s. Last Monday night, it happened again, and we’ve been taking cold sponge baths ever since. Eric found a headless, bloated dead rat floating atop the waves, and when they subsided, he bleached it and carried it out of the basement in a shovel.

Sure, there’s a certain amount of good-natured reaction at first, that goes like this:

“Well, now, I guess God just really wanted to bless the furnace repairman.”

And it’s good-natured as long as you have enough income to cover it. But what if you don’t? And how long until the situation becomes very old and you realize this is not a rare occurrence but a frequently repeated one? We’re supposed to be able to retreat to our basement in case of a tornado. But if it comes during a torrential rainfall, we will have to wade in the murky water to escape the high winds. This is not ideal.

At this juncture, we are trying to let the water heater dry out and see if we can get it to re-start. Maybe, just maybe we won’t have to shell out hundreds more dollars again. Calls to the County Surveyor’s office by us and several neighbors including the fire department, have only brought the answer, “The county doesn’t have any money to fix the storm sewers.”

Of course, we’ve all heard the saying “When it rains, it pours,” which became the slogan for the Morton Salt company along with the little girl with the umbrella. The meaning is, doesn’t it just seem like we can’t just have one thing go wrong – everything has to go wrong all at once!

In our case, there were other financial difficulties that happened at the same time as this last water-in-the-basement episode. While I won’t go into all the details, this really complicated our lives.

Eric sat me down and outlined several possibilities he’d thought of, none of which we could really afford.

There’s excavating our yard out to the storm sewer, which is made of hollow clay tiles laid end-to-end, and installing a double trap system so that the water can’t back up into our house – instead it would back up into our garage. Then we’d have to do the same thing to our garage. And then, the water might just back up into the streets through that manhole near the old general store.

There is the possibility of just sealing off the drain hole in our basement. But there are some pipes that he’s not sure where they lead to and we would not know the effects of that till they happened.

There’s the sump pump idea. Great! That would pump the water out to … where? To make a cesspool in our yard?

There’s the idea of getting a new water heater that is shorter so we can place it a couple feet higher in the basement. But what if the next time, the water is three feet high instead of two feet high? And the short fat ones are electric. Do we want an electric water heater in a basement that floods?

And there’s the idea of taking away all the wooden cabinets in my pantry and installing the water heater in there instead. That would be to accept that we can no longer use our basement for any purpose but to surrender it to oft-repeated invasions of stormwater and the disgusting smell that accompanies it. And, we have to accept the reduction in our normal living space, making room for those basement appliances.

So what have we learned? Because we are having financial difficulties at the same time as the storm sewer woes, we are able to empathize with other neighbors who also can’t afford excavations and such. One neighbor approached the County with storm sewer problems, and instead of offering to help, the County offered to condemn their property. So they dug a hole in their yard and broke the sewer line to their house to drain the sewage into the yard, so it wouldn’t back up in their toilets. They just have to live with the pool. Another neighbor said that everything that’s done on our street is basically illegal, but people are just trying to do whatever they can, while the County looks the other way.

No, we aren’t going to be able to keep silent on the question. It’s not just about us. We’ll need to try to find long-term solutions, going to our neighbors, the County, our Liberty Township Trustee and Advisory Board, our homeowner’s insurance agent, and … if need be, the EPA. This can’t continue.

On Wednesday, when things looked the most grim, the thing to do was to go to church, as is our custom. There’s no doubt in my mind that God will provide for us, His dear children. We were only flabbergasted about how it could happen. What we needed was to hear God’s promises, and we needed the prayers of God’s people.

Here are some of the verses I circled in my Bible when we were going through several chapters in Psalms: (Note: This is from the Tree of Life Version, and sometimes verse numbers are different.)

“But I trust in Your lovingkindness, my heart rejoices in Your salvation.

I will sing to ADONAI, because He has been good to me.” ~Psalms 13:6

“Since He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.” ~Psalm 16:8

“Protect me like the pupil of the eye.” ~Ps. 17:8

“For You save lowly people.” ~Ps. 18:28

“He is a shield to all who take refuge in Him.” ~Ps. 18:31

These promises are to God’s people. And I am one of those!

What did our ancestor Noah learn when the waters were overwhelming him and indeed, the whole earth? In his case, he learned that God is with those who love Him, even through the flood.

Here’s a beautiful old hymn that reminds us of that, that we learned and then Eric used to lead our congregation in worship during the Sunday morning church service, after a week of cold showers:

God Leads His Dear Children Along.

In shady, green pastures, so rich and so sweet