For anyone living in the Des Moines area, you likely experienced a severe storm last week. Over 17,000 people without power (myself included), high winds causing major damage across the region, and a bucketload of rain. Gauges measured 5”-6” in just a few short hours.
While my story doesn’t begin to compare with the destruction others experienced that night, it did result in an unexpected discovery.
My power went out a little after 6 pm when there was still a fair amount of daylight left. No worries on my end. MidAmerican will get it back on soon. Sure, there’s a lot of rain, but nothing I hadn’t seen before living in the Midwest.
Things turned a little wonky when the dreaded “chirp” from the smoke detectors kicked in. “How weird,” I thought because I had new detectors installed the day before this storm. How could they be chirping already?
After an hour or so of going crazy with this, I decided I had to track down the culprit. Turns out it wasn’t a smoke detector after all, but my carbon monoxide detector was chirping at me.
I contemplated taking out the battery but thought better of it considering the powerful storm rolling through. Perhaps this detector would be necessary.
Around 8:00 pm, the blessed power returned. Hallelujah! Now the chirping will come to an end.
Not so fast. The chirping stopped for a few seconds and then a full-on alert blasted out from the detector. What?? Is this how it tells me it’s back on house power?
Apparently not. When I checked the display, I saw this: GAS. Yikes! What do I do with that? Well, despite my assumption that it was likely somehow related to the power off/power on situation, I wasn’t going to take any chances.
So, with visions of a house explosion, I loaded Maisy and Mimi into my Tucson and we drove to a nearby parking lot where I called 911.
The 911 operator was contacting the fire department and said it would be safe for me to drive back to my neighborhood and wait for my rescuers somewhere nearby.
Within about 10 minutes, bright headlights on a large vehicle pulled up behind me. The cavalry had arrived!
I opened the garage door so they could check for any potential gas leaks and patiently waited in my vehicle in the driveway in the pouring rain. Well, Mimi and I waited patiently. Maisy, not so much. When she realized this trip wasn’t going to end at her favorite dog kennel, she started crying. Such a drama queen.
When the fireman in charge came out, he said he had good news and bad news. The good news is that there’s no sign of a gas leak – weird alerts probably related to power outage.
However, while they were in the furnace room in my basement, they found a puddle of water that was dripping off the main I-beam that runs the full length of the basement and holds up the house! Yikes again!
He thought it might be water coming from a foundation problem with all the rain. Lord, I hope not. My kind neighbor (who had been watching all this “rescue” activity) came over to check it out and determined the water was coming from my master bathroom toilet and dripping down a pipe onto the massive beam. The floor was barely wet behind the toilet because most of the water was just following the pipe into the basement.
The severity of the potential problem lowered a bit. So, he turned the water off at the toilet and I called a plumber the next morning. At this point, I figured the worst that could happen would be buying a new toilet.
The plumber arrived the following morning and was busy in my bathroom for about an hour and a half. I heard lots of noise back there but had no idea what was happening.
Eventually he came out and said there were a couple of leaking areas, and one required a reset of the toilet. But no new toilet and no large bill. All was fixed for under $300. What a relief!
While this is a long story to get to a much shorter point, the buildup is absolutely necessary.
While there were clearly some scary moments throughout the evening, they all led to the discovery of that leaky toilet. How long before I noticed any moisture behind it? How long before I went down into my furnace room and saw the puddle of water?
It likely would have been weeks or even months before either happened and I shudder to think what other, more serious damage could have been done.
Ultimately it was all the interrelated steps during that crazy storm that God used to reveal a completely unrelated problem and, more importantly, give me an opportunity to avert a much more serious problem.
But isn’t that just how God works? At the risk of being too metaphorical, God can take any storm in our life, regardless of how serious or complicated or circuitous it may seem, and bring about a purposeful result we never could have anticipated.
We just need to look past the storm and see that there is always a glimmer of hope. And that hope is the sovereignty of God.
I know that you can do all things,
and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
Job 42:2