Anyone for a dip?

Sunday night is small group night for our family. We get together with 5 other couples and spend time in worship, prayer and fellowship. We needed that tonight more than we would ever imagine.

After we got home from small group I got the kids ready for bed while Mr. Clean took out the trash. After everyone was successfully brushed, washed and in pajamas I sat down to work on this week's curriculum. From the basement I heard Mr. Clean call out, "Angel, I need you."

Now normally that would be fairly romantic. He needs me? Like to quench flames of desire? He needs just to see my face since it has been a whole 10 minutes and he misses me? He needs my presence by his side to remind him of the life long commitment we made in front of God and family? Fat chance. He only calls me "Angel" when he is talking about me or there is something wrong. Usually I am "Babe" or "Honey". Something was amiss.

I went downstairs to find a brand new indoor swimming pool! Granted, it was just a kiddie pool, but there was wall to wall water nonetheless. There was about a solid inch of water covering the entire floor. It is pouring rain here and the float on our super-duper-less-than-a-year-old-sump-pump had gotten stuck. And we had a mess. As soon as he fixed the pump, which took about 3.6 seconds it was as if the tide was going out. Water was starting to be sucked down into the no longer filled to capacity sump pit within minutes, but since our house can not be picked up and tilted to one side and the basement is fairly level, there was still a ton of water. Mr. Clean surveyed the mess and decided to call our friends whose house we had just left from small group. Two families were still there and with out a second thought two of Mr. Clean's close friends and brothers in Christ were on their way to help us deal with the flood.

I set to work to deal with the two loads of laundry that had been carried downstairs the day before but not yet laundered. They probably had wicked up at least a gazillion gallons of water on their own, the clothes were that heavy. Through it all however I was amazingly unfazed.

Here is what I know. Even in a mini flood like this, Christ is still on His throne and is in control. Our basement is unfinished, but we did have two huge area rugs with padding that covered half of the basement wall to wall. We had partitioned off half the basement with a 4 foot wall (just made of plywood) and a gate to keep the kids out of the workshop on the other half. In just two hours three men had cut up and removed every bit of seriously waterlogged carpeting and padding, carried the furniture and toys that could have been ruined up to the garage and used a wet shop vacuum to remove the over 40 gallons that was still on the floor.

Every bit of computer equipment Mr. Clean had downstairs in his home office was above ground level and protected. We had previously removed every card board box and all the Christmas decorations as we wanted to reorganize the basement. Most all of the toys that were down there (save Dressy Bessy, poor soaked thing) were in plastic containers or were made of plastic. None of this was pre planning on our part. It just so happened that nothing was damaged or ruined except the carpet. All I could do was praise the King of all creation. God is good!

Now that isn't to say that by some miracle all the water magically disappeared and the basement is dry as a bone. We still have work to do downstairs, but I can guarantee that the floor has never been this clean before!