A humorous anecdote

On the list of things that made me laugh hysterically this week, you wouldn’t think a broken toilet handle would take the top spot, but here we are.

This week, we were having issues with the flush valve on our toilet, which isn’t uncommon. Then, one piece simply sheered off, necessitating some replacements. I was sure the process to find a replacement part would necessitate visiting multiple hardware stores, waiting for someone’s third cousin’s youngest brother across town to bring half of the parts we need. What can I say, we’re rurally located and I’m a glass half empty sort of person. Most days I struggle to find my glass. But lo and behold, we went to one store, waited for ten minutes, and voila, parts were in hand! I was dangerously close to optimism.

The next day the install was complete, and our plumbing all worked perfectly… er, it worked as well as it had prior to the valve falling to pieces. Then, perhaps a grand total of 24 hours after the repair, Dana pops into the room and says, “You’ll never guess what just happened!”

I didn’t guess. In fact, my first guess was that a cockroach had crawled into one of our hand towels. (Yes, it’s a real fear, we shake out our bath towels before use because we have some seriously unsavory house guests here.) But I digress.

In fact, Dana was holding up our poor replacement toilet handle which had completely snapped off the second time the toilet had been flushed since the replacements had been made. And I don’t think I’ve laughed harder in my life. I had been so proud of my plumbing skills (ok, skills are a stretch, but hey, I made it work), and so happy to have accomplished something in our new home, and it broke.

Fear not, I did cobble together something with our old toilet handle, and our toilet does mostly work, but the whole episode was utterly ridiculous. Life, especially missionary life, especially missionary life in a new culture and remote location, contains a million and one of these sorts of scenarios. Tiny, sometimes miniscule successes and failures make up the substance of our days.

Was the broken handle actually a failure? Yes, I suppose so, but the hilarity it caused actually moved it firmly into the success category. Because do you have any idea how many things break and fail around here? Some days it can feel like everything, me included. (No, really, I tripped down the stairs last week and my shins are still neon colors.)

We often say that people are more than the sum of their parts, well, days, projects, memories, all work the same way. If I just looked at my life and efforts and decided if it was all worth it based on a set of objective profit and loss categories on a spreadsheet, it would be fairly grim. But that isn’t at all what brings life meaning. That isn’t how God has designed us. For the believer, nothing is wasted, nothing is done in vain. Because God is the one who orders our days, broken plumbing and all.