Leaky Roof and Tender Mercies

"We have a serious problem."

My husband was supposed to be joining me at 4:00 to do interviews for the little company of which he is a part. The children had gotten out of school at 3:30, and he'd already called to say they were home, which meant they would have been coming soon. There was no time to spare. What could have gone wrong in that five minutes since he had last called?

To boot, I didn't really even have time for this unexpected phone call. I was frantically getting input from other interviewers and was already going to be late as it was. (I'm in charge of a collegiate internship competition and was at meetings all afternoon getting things squared away for that.)

A (very large) part of me didn't want to know what was happening.

"We have water coming into our entry way! Can you hear the 'drop, drop, drop'?"

My husband had put a bucket under the leak and the plopping sound was loud. This was no small leak. I shuddered to think of the potential damage to the wood floor and the antique buffet I had inherited from Grandma that was right there.

"It's also coming down the wall."

That might explain the strange water marks on the family history pictures that I had noticed long ago. Ugh.

"OK," I said. "I think you need to stay there and call someone to come check this out." Why do things like this seem to happen late on a Friday afternoon?

I scrambled to gather all the information about the other positions, and consequently was 20 minutes late to our interviews.

But (I can still hardly believe it), my husband was able to get there in time to visit with our first interviewee (and all the others after him), in spite of it all!

It was only afterwards that I learned more about what miracles had taken place.


The dripping started while my husband was at home. Obviously, we have had some trouble before, but it was never this severe. When I came home to check, there was only the slightest amount of water damage to the two legs on the buffet. And the wood floor looks fine, from what I can tell. (There's enough junk that has accumulated behind and under the buffet that I would have been able to tell if we had had significant water on the floor before.)

My husband was able to find a guy who was able to come out immediately. He patched the roof and will come back when it's dry to really fix it. The estimate he gave was very reasonable. I was worried this would cost us thousands of dollars.

Because I was behind schedule, that gave my husband enough time to get back to campus before any of the students had left. Since he is part of this company, it was extremely valuable for him to have a chance to meet with all of the students.

And we even had time to go to dinner as a family afterwards.

Even in the midst of craziness and unexpected challenges, the hand of the Lord can be evident. I am so grateful.