God's Sense of Humor: The Trials and Tribulations of Plumbing

A nagging spouse is like the drip, drip, drip of a leaky faucet; [Proverbs 27:15, the Message]

The nice thing about a leaking faucet is that your wife does not have to nag you about fixing it. This week I'm on vacation, and my wife did mention that it would be nice if I fixed the kitchen faucet. She wasn't nagging, mind you. After all, a dripping faucet is one of those self-nagging home improvement projects.

Instead of just fixing it, I decided to go ahead and just replace the darned thing. So after a little grocery shopping at the Walmart Supercenter, I went over to Lowes and picked out a new faucet to install.

Now I've done this before, and most times when I've replaced a faucet or a toilet valve, I've also had to replace a supply valve and the water supply tube (a friend of mine who helped me re-tile our bathroom says my house was built by apes - and I believe him). I went into Lowes knowing that I might have to do more than replace a faucet but also hoping I wouldn't have to. However today was no exception.

As soon as I tried to turn off the hot water supply to the faucet, the cheap plastic handle broke (not surprising since the cheap plastic handle has had sufficient opportunity to become brittle in the nearly 20 years since those apes built our house). The valve on the cold water supply was not budging, but I knew it would break nonetheless. This was followed by the usual string of curses and profanities commonly uttered when one is working with plumbing. And although I tried and failed, it was nice to know that people don't usually look in the cabinet under the sink to see the hole you punched in the wall with a pipe wrench. I'm just glad that the neighborhood children were in school.

So I went out and turned off the water to the house, disconnected the old faucet and removed the old supply valves. I took one of the supply valves with me to Home Depot just down the street. A nice employee - who reminded me a little of my dad, of all people - pointed me in the right direction and told me he'd meet me there in a few minutes. Sure enough he came by, looked at my old parts, and picked through some new ones. He said, "God loves you," not necessarily because he was sharing his faith (maybe he was) but because he was able to find exactly what I needed and that it wouldn't cost too much.

Anyway, everything is back to normal and the new faucet looks nice. It doesn't drip, either.

The irony of this whole thing is that I read the above passage from Proverbs 27:15 just this morning. You gotta love God's sense of humor!