If I weren’t 55,” I told a good friend, “I think I’d cry.”
That morning I had finally made it across mushy wet carpet, through the maze of cords powering a dozen professional carpet-drying fans, to check out our floor safe.
Water stood level with the concrete, completely covering the safe’s knob and lid. With a towel I soaked up that two inches of water and then dialed the combination to open the heavy safe door. My worst fears were confirmed. The broken pipe that filled our house with water three days earlier had converted our safe into an aquarium.
Not that we really own anything valuable enough to keep in a safe. But it seemed wise, since the home came equipped with one, at least to store our important documents in its fireproof confines.
Nobody, though, seems to have thought about making one of those contraptions waterproof, too.
I spent the entire day separating the soggy pages of insurance policies, passports, house deeds, car titles, my ordination papers, birth certificates, our marriage license. Page by saturated page I sponged off a 130-page real estate abstract.
The scant jewelry we own is mostly heirloom type. Grandpa’s watch. Aunt Susie’s necklace. Nothing terribly expensive, but all of it the sort of thing you hate to see ruined. Stored in plastic baggies, supposedly to protect them from such a fate, every watch was full of murky green water.
After a week of jet-plane-level noise, the huge fans and the humidifier are silent. Grit covers every exposed surface in the house. Furniture and other belongings remain piled in the few corners the water missed. A musty odor permeates the premises. Exposed carpet tack strips endanger any careless toe. “Be patient,” the insurance adjuster tells us. “It will take a long time to put all this back together again.”
Times like this make a fellow glad he’s not rich. Just think what might have been ruined in that safe if I had been a wealthy man!
Today I have a fresh perspective on our Lord’s warning about storing up our treasures on earth “where moth and rust (and broken plumbing) can destroy” them. The more “treasures” we accumulate, the more complicated our lives become.