Rescue From Lake Eerie

This story was originally written on June 6, 2008 and sent to friends and relatives via e-mail. It's another tale illustrating just how awesome God is.

A Timely Gift

As I walked into my Bible study last Monday night (June 2), I was giddy with excitement because Don, a member of our study, gave me a metric truck-load of tools that he no longer needed: garden shovels, a snow shovel, a pick axe, a few saws and a bunch of small hand tools—two big boxes full. I was really eager to put 'em to use but little did I know at the time how soon I would need them.

Clearing Gutters

The next day (June 3), I "went to town" on a huge maple tree that was obscuring our view of the basketball court in the back yard, and also hacked away at the ivy that was slowing suffocating it. It was rainy all day, but I didn't care—I was having a blast hacking away those big branches and throwing them in the middle of the court! After liberating the maple from the ivy grip of death, I went up on the deck to try to remove some limbs from over the gutters. While up there, I decided to run my hands along the inside of the gutter to see what I could come up with (I didn't have a ladder). After pulling out about a dozen handfuls of muck, water started gushing out the downspout and I let loose with a mighty Tim Taylor-esque "ARR! ARR! ARRGH!!" What a beautiful sight to see water gushing out the bottom. There I stood atop my deck watching fruits of my labor, but my joy quickly turned into a pained gasp as a huge lake started to form up against the foundation. "NOOOOOO!" I tried to divert the water with an old board that was lying around but that got me nowhere. Then I remembered that Don gave me a spade! So I ran to the shed, grabbed the spade and started digging a trench to escort the water away from the house. A few minutes later, I had the water moving away from the house. I stood there to monitor the progress of my new ditch and let out another "ARR! ARR! ARRGH!"

Bailing Out

Feeling so very manly, I decided then to go walk around the house to see if anything else needed conquering. I rounded the first corner. “Okay, no puddles here. The gutter is clogged, but it's 25' above ground so I can't do anything about that now." As I rounded the second corner, I was horrified to see that someone had moved Lake Eerie into my driveway, and that the garage (filled with dozens upon dozens of cardboard boxes) was now beach front property! In the chaos of the move, I couldn't find any five gallon buckets, so I ran to the front door, rang the doorbell about two dozen times and then went tearing back to the garage to find something to scoop with. I found an old pot and started bailing, but 2/3rds of one side of my roof was draining into the driveway about a foot from the clogged drain in the driveway, and water was, of course, still coming down the driveway towards me! So I dropped to my hands and knees in about 5" of very cold water and tried to unclog the drain manually. I pulled out fistful after fistful of muck from the 4" PVC pipe leading from the drain but even after going in elbow-deep, the water still wasn't draining.

Then it came to me...."SIPHON! I need a siphon!" So I ran around the back of the house and grabbed the garden hose (which was left with the house—I didn't have a garden hose before) and after filling it with water from the spigot, I got it going. But it wasn't enough. So I grabbed a soaker hose and got two siphons going. Still not enough!

My aunt, in town with my mom to help with the move, suggested that I use a snow shovel to push the water away. As it just so happens, Don gave me one of those the day before! So I started bulldozing water off the side of the driveway, which helped a little bit, but I was only treading water (literally and figuratively). About 2/3 of the water I pushed away came right back downgrade at me. So I grabbed a shovel and the pick axe Don gave me the day before and dug a trench from the edge of the driveway (over the already dug-up area where the septic tank lid was just replaced) out towards the woods. This helped tremendously, as I was then able to push water over the edge of the driveway and keep it on the other side. But progress was slow to nonexistent—the water was going down ever so slowly...ever so painfully slow. So, barking orders like a general under enemy fire, I told my wife to take my aunt to Home Depot and get me a sump pump and a plumbing snake (my aunt most of her life on the farm--she knows about things like sump pumps).

A Necessary Diversion

After having spent probably close to an hour shoveling water and digging trenches, I took a step back and took a good look at my roof and noticed how the amount of water coming from that downspout was really rather significant. My aunt, waiting in the garage for Adair to drive them to Home Depot, suggested earlier that I need to get that thing diverted, but I thought that the driveway was contributing more to my problems than the roof just by sheer virtue of the surface area of the driveway. But as I looked behind me I saw that God had used Aunt Connie, my mom and even my 5-year old son to prepare me for this time. When I left for Bible study the night before, I said to my son in the hearing of my mom and aunt, "I'd be really thrilled to see this area weeded when I get back home tonight" (He was super excited to be able to dig and hack at something without getting in trouble :-). When I got home after study, not only did I see the entire area devoid of weeds, but they also had dug a little gully around the area in preparation for a decorative brick barrier wall. So now, 24 hours later, I stood there watching a significant amount of water rushing downhill into that freshly made groove in the soil, and away from Lake Eerie in which I was then standing. All I could do was smile and offer thanks and praise to God for Don's generosity, my family's hard work, and of course for God's awesome timing. There I was, up to my ankles in rainwater, actually laughing out loud. God is awesome. But it gets better.

Adair and I had been praying for a washer and dryer for a couple of weeks as I was a bit dismayed to see that brand new front-loading washers cost about $1,400 and up...and dryers are almost as expensive. But God provided us a one-year-old super-sized set for $900! On Sunday, June 1, a friend from church and I went to go pick up the answer to my family's prayers. But what does this have to do with Lake Eerie? Everything. As I stood there gawking at the downspout, it became very clear to me that I needed to get that water from the roof away from the driveway. But with what? What would I use? I thought and thought and thought, but I couldn't think of anything that would be big enough to get around the downspout and still be able to make the immediate 90-degree turn to the edge of the driveway towards my new ditch. The idea resounded through my skull like a gong...

DRYER HOSE!!

"Aunt Connie! Go pull the vent hose off of the back of the clothes dryer!" A minute later, she emerged from the laundry room with the floppy 4" hose in her hand. It was the perfect length—neither an inch too short nor an inch too lon—-and was doing a fantastic job of ushering the Niagara-like flow of water over the edge of the driveway. But once again, God's sovereignty shines through the clouds. Remember when I mentioned the septic tank's lid being replaced? That wasn't tangential trivia—it's a critical part of this story.

About That Septic Tank

When selling a property that has an on-site septic system, the seller is obligated to have the tank pumped and inspected. So as with our sale, the seller ordered a routine inspection, but the problem was that whoever had paved the driveway laid asphalt over about 1/3rd of the tank lid—the septic tank folks couldn't even access one of the three access ports. So the seller gave the order to "Do whatever it takes to make it right." This, unfortunately, meant tearing about three feet off of the edge of the driveway to fully expose the tank. When they left, the entire area was left looking as if it were the detonation point of a small conventional weapon (i.e., it looked like a bomb went off). But my Father in Heaven knew that if that driveway weren't munched just so, our garage would have been flooded for sure because that dryer hose wouldn't have reached to the edge of the driveway. It's as if God was the Foreman on the site and told the guy with the trackhoe, "Okay, rip up that asphalt to this point right here and not an inch farther. I want to demonstrate (once again) that I wasn't kidding when I said in Romans 8:28, 'And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.'"

So there I stood...two garden hose siphons, a 4" dryer hose, soaked to the bone, and pushing water over the edge of the asphalt with an old snow shovel, all the while smiling and thanking God for His amazing on-time provisions.

By the time Adair and Aunt Connie returned from Home Depot, the water was down to about an inch deep and we used the utility pump to suck out the rest of the water. When I think of that night, I just can't help but think of how awesome God is in using the purchase of a new washer and dryer coupled, an energetic five year-old, and the generosity of a brother in Christ to rescue us from certain water damage.

What an amazing night, and what an amazing God we serve.