Life Can Be A DiTcH

There's nothing that will bring a family together any quicker than a family project.Two weeks ago the much needed rain finally arrived and after many days of down pour the ground was finally saturated with water that had to find a place to go. The place it found was our basement. We spent the night pumping out water and shampooing our carpet. We had a definite problem. So what do you do when you have a problem, of course you call on family. Neither son was thrilled to get this phone call but both showed up bright and early ready to help (cash didn't hurt as a little incentive). We dug for 26 hours over a span of 4 days. We not only got a really good work out we actually learned several things.The first area we dug was a 5 ½ feet deep, 12 foot long ditch. We found a drain that had previously been put in when this house was first built. The builder had put the French drain (Google it)in around the foundation but with nowhere for it to drain, and it also was tilted back toward the house so of course this is why we were getting so much water. It finally filled the pipe up with mud. This was a lesson in itself. If you try to take shortcuts and don't do the job right, it will show up sooner or later, and someone will have to do it again.Have you ever thought things were just going too smoothly? Well that's when most things happen in life isn't it? Things were going well until the ditch caved in. We had been trying to chip away at a large rock that was covering the existing pipe, and finally had cracked enough of the rock away, that we were able to cut the clogged pipe out. A French drain requires gravel before laying the new pipe down. What we didn't know was the old pipe was supporting the rock we were trying to remove and the rock was supporting the entire bank of dirt. The huge rock fell into the ditch and the entire bank of dirt fell on top of the rock. We were back to square one. I look into my sons eyes and saw the look of defeat. I took a deep breath and told him, "This ditch is your life. Life has its ups and downs. The trick is to never stop digging until you succeed". I handed him a shovel and I grabbed one myself and we started to dig together until we reached the rock. It was a really big rock. It was too heavy for us to lift, so we found a chain and come along and winched it out of the ditch. It was a wonderful feeling to overcome such an obstacle in life, I mean in our ditch. We were full of energy again and felt we could actually succeed. We were laughing and actually enjoying working side by side and feeling great about what we had accomplished so far and of course we hit another obstacle, more rock. This was more than just a rock; this was a 10 foot long boulder that was in our way. We had to have enough of a drop in our 50 feet of drain pipe to carry the water away from the French drain. This is why the builder had stopped. He hit a wall of rock and just gave up. We worked for 3 hours trying to drill and chip away enough stone to lay the drain pipe. It was impossible to cut through this with the tools we had on hand. We had decided to stop and regroup. Just by chance we started digging further over and to our surprise the rock actually ended just 6 inches over from where we had stopped digging. It reminds me of stories I've heard about the difference between people that succeed and the ones who fail, and how many times those people that did fail could have reached their dreams if only they had given it one more try.We had some really good conversation over these past 26 hours, and not only accomplished our mission, of replacing a failed drain, but also repaired some relationships that had unknowingly failed. The forecast is rain again today. I can’t wait to find out if all that work pays off!It Did!oerI decided to repost this little story after hearing from someone that is obviously hurting. We all have rainy days in our life, but it takes the rainy days as well as the sunny ones for us to grow.When you can truly be happy for others, you’ll find out your on successes are so much sweeter, and if you do fall down, you’ll have one more friend to help pick you up!
All Smiles
oer