When plumbing problems are an answer to prayers

Yeah, that title seems unlikely, right.  But hear me out.

Once upon a time last December, I got a new full time job.  This was a HUGE blessing to our family financially, but it also put a strain on my available time for household chores and the like (good thing I have slowly tempered my perfectionist cleaning tendencies over the years).  I simply didn't have as much time available as I used to have.  Now, it worked out ok because all of the kids were in school so no one was ignored or left to their own devices and I could work from home while they were learning at school, but it did mean that it was harder to fit in all the daily family tasks that needed to be done.

  One of my major concerns was our water.  You see, since we moved into this house 14 years ago, we have had big headaches with our water pressure.  I imagine that most people don't think twice about water pressure, but I promise, if it is bad, you think about it A LOT!  I knew that come summer I would be strained beyond belief to work full time each day while managing a house full of kids (although I would have Josh there to help) and also completing the laundry and dishes and cleaning and watering.  We already faced those sitcom-esque scenerios where only one person can shower at a time or else the water barely dribbles out the faucet, or if someone flushed the toilet while you were washing your hands you had to wait a minute for things to even out before you could rinse.  You couldn't do laundry and wash dishes at the same time and heaven forbid you try to run a sprinkler while using water anywhere else in the house.  It really stunk (stank?).

In the summer, water becomes a big headache for me.  It took 6 spots at 30 minutes per spot to water our front lawn and 8 to do our back not including our parking strip and side yard or our flower and vegetable gardens.  Add to that the fact that you couldn't do laundry, dishes, or showers while also watering the yard and there is NO WAY you could water more than one spot at a time and suddenly water became an ordeal.  

I didn't know how it would all get done because my attention needed to be on work much of the time.  I didn't have enough hours in a day to play water fairy and also spend the time needed on my job.  I prayed and prayed that the Lord wold help something work out, but I couldn't see an answer that would alleviate the struggle.

Jump back to December.  We decided replace our nasty, old bathroom sink and cabinet thanks to a great deal we found.  It should have been a simple procedure, but it blossomed into a mess (which happens with plumbing in our house).  The pipes refused to go back together without leaking so after much effort and lots of complaining we called our friend who does plumbing to help us out (if you don't have a friend who does plumbing, you should get one).   

While our friend was helping us address the problems, he got a glimpse of our pitiful slobber of house water and on further inspection he found that someone had installed a thingy (yes, that's the technical term) that limits the pressure of the water to somehow benefit the pipes or something (whatever) .  And inspiration struck.  Our helper said, if we removed that thingy, which he assured us we didn't need, we would greatly improve our sad dribble of culinary water.

So I crossed my fingers and hoped.  

A few weeks ago, our plumbing friend came over and he and Josh spent several hours working to cut this big metal gadget out of the pipe and then mend the pipe and put everything back together.  It wasn't fun for them (and it blossomed into a mess again -- that happens with plumbing in our house).

But when they were done, we turned on the water and 

OH MY GOODNESS...it was WILD!

We turned on the shower, we turned on the sprinkler, we ran the kitchen sink. then we flushed the toilet for good measure and the water kept flowing just fine.

You should have seen our children dancing through the house as we celebrated our new found water gold mine (seriously, when a house full of sprites is thrilled with spurting liquid you know things have been rough).  It was a time of much rejoicing.

But here's the thing, if Josh had been able to put the plumbing together without incident in December we never would have called our ex-plumber pal.  If we had never called him, we would not have learned that we could fix a problem we had dealt with for 14 years.  And if we had not been able to correct that problem, my life would be an unmanageable mess of work and kids and water chores.  

But God knew what I needed.  So six months before the heat of summer hit, He set things in motion to open up a path for my benefit (read that as sanity).  

He cares enough about me to bless me with plumbing problems so that I could get the answer to my prayers. That's a pretty miraculous thing.