I should have crawled under the house.
If I had crawled under the house I wouldn’t have spent $40 I really can’t afford right now.
But I did.
Because I didn’t want to take the easy way out on this.
The faucet on the side of the house had been leaking for weeks. I tried various solutions to fix it and nothing seemed to work. I had two options: go under the house and disconnect the pipe to the faucet so I could go to Home Depot and get a replacement or take the pipe wrench outside and see if I could twist it off and pull it out without going under the house.
You see, I HATE going under the house.
I had to go under the house a little earlier this year to look at the sub-floor for the downstairs bathroom. I hated it. Spiders. I think I saw a snake at one point. Can’t be sure. It was dark outside of the flashlight beam.
However, I remember looking at the pipes where it went outside and I didn’t see any kind of shut off valve.
My neighbor, who once renovated the house, told me that the only shut off was at the street.
So I took the wrench and was able to get the faucet and the attached pipe off from the outside.
The plan…get to Home Depot (because I won’t shop at Lowe’s as long as they sponsor the #48 car of Jimmie Johnson), get what I need, slide it back in and be able to watch the end of the last NASCAR race of the year.
You see, I love NASCAR.
The time between mid-November and mid-February really are hard on me.
I didn’t want to miss the double joy of seeing the last race of the year and watching Jimmie Johnson not win the title.
Home Depot trip…smooth as silk.
Come home, put the pieces together…nice and easy.
Tried to put the pipe through the hole on the wall….and the new connection was too big.
OK, small snag. It’s only a little too big…10 minutes…done.
Slide the pipe in and try to line it up. No good. After 20 minutes of trying I knew I had no choice.
I had to climb under the house.
So off I go…under the house.
I crawl through the spiderwebs and dirt…and I get to where the pipes were to match up.
That’s when I notice it.
A shut-off valve right where the pipes were to connect. It had been there all along.
I could have turned it off weeks ago. No leak. No replacement. No need to spend that money.
But I wanted to do it the easy way. The fast way.
And I hate to say it…but I could almost hear God laugh at me when I was down there.
He had to be…because He immediately made me think of the times I tried to short-cut my growth in Him or tried to take the “easy path” only to find myself worse off than when I started. I wanted the end result…growth, maturity in Christ, sometimes status or position…so I’d skip what I knew God was calling me to do for that growth in an attempt to come up with my own plan to get the “prize” at the end.
Today, I should have crawled under the house and taken the path I really didn’t want to take to accomplish the goal of stopping the leak.
Tomorrow, I may have to remind myself to take God’s narrow path that seems like one I don’t want to take to accomplish the task of being more like Him.
And remind myself there’s only 97 days until the Daytona 500.
