It was a good day. He was helpful, reasonably happy and adolescence moodiness gave way to smiles and laughter. We packed the car with food and headed toward the land of buffalo wings and burgers.
Bellies full, we meandered across the parking lot, and into our car.
Little did I know that he hadn't done #2 in about 3 days...
At 9:00 pm, movie paused and not done with my potato chips, my Wonderful Wife called me to the upstairs toilet.
I knew that is never a good sign...
He had tried to flush it about half a dozen times before giving up and watching the beginning of our movie. Mare tried flushing it down three more times, after seeing it lodged in the bottom of the porcelain bowl. It would not budge, forward, nor backward; it gave no quarter to the plungers valiant attacks...
I had read on Facebook about a sure fire remedy, using liberal amounts of Dawn dishwashing liquid, buckets of hot water and multiple flushings.
I cursed the internet that night...
Seeing that liquid would eventually flush itself around the brick like obstruction, I resigned myself (and the rest of my family) to the fact it would be a " pee only" fixture for the night.
I generally look forward to Sunday's, but I felt just like Monday was coming with the soon rising sun.
After all the morning showers ( except for mine) I brought up a bucket holding my toilet snake. I pushed the head of it thru the murky water and began turning he handle, hoping to see the snake pull itself dutifully thru the internal porcelain passages and deeper into the 4" copper drain pipe.
Dutiful, it was not...
So I reached my hand into the fouled water, pushing the spring-like snake thru the S curved throne. If you haven't done this, realize it is about as easy as pushing a rope up a flagpole...
After the third time I was able to get a nice, powerful sounding and quick draining flush.
As I cleaned up the bathroom and sanitized my hands, I thought about, of all things, God and Jesus...
God cannot look on sin without judgement so He sent His only Son to be our Advocate.
Jesus lived in a sinful world, loving all, but frequenting the ones who were broken by lives of sin and were trapped in it, the most.
It was Hiim that touched the leper, and his hands that washed filthy feat; they knew the sweat and dirt of a carpenters work and His fingers wrote in the dust, in behalf of a woman caught in sin...
Our connection to a Loving God was clogged in much the same way as my toilet was, this morning. I doubt in looking at our own sins, we would see them as any better than the "stuff" that blocked that drain, today...
But Jesus put his hand in our filth, opening that conduit that connects us to God, cleaning us and covering Himself in the process, by our sin, staying sinless, Himself.
He died in our guilt and rose immaculately clean, standing beside His Father, as Satan proclaims our sins to God, Jesus just smiles and declares us cleansed by His own Blood.
I jumped in the shower and scrubbed my hands like Jack Nicholson in " As Good as it Gets". I thought of all my sins, those past, but mostly those recent. As the residues that stuck to my skin from my mornings work dripped off of me and down the shower drain, I repented of things I could not cleanse myself with, by soap and water. Knowing how humbling and just plain " ickey" it was plunging thru someone else's mess of poop, I felt small asking Him to do it for me, again...
I wish I did not still sin and did not regularly need cleaning, but I do.
I still do...
It breaks me sometimes, this fallible humanness.
Almost constantly...
But the good news, some of the best news, was written a few thousand years ago.
In Heaven I will never sin again. I won't be afraid of sin anymore, and won't dread the temptations thrown daily in my path.
I love that thought...
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