It seems Sundays are our day for "bad things to happen." I was zooming along with my household chores yesterday, pulling my last load of laundry out of the washing machine. It was the quilt I made some years ago - hand-stitched and everything - and there was something.... Not Right... about it. It felt gritty. And the color was, erm, Alabama-clay-orange?
So I called the philosopher in, and he took a single look and headed for the bathroom. ("Hmm - it looks really bad, but not bad enough to hurl," I thought!) When I walked to the open doorway, he was running the bathroom faucet, and nasty orange-brown, thick, silty water was pouring forth. We've had a lot of rain the past week or so, and it looks like our 30 year old well may have gone to meet its maker (driller?) at last. We think there's a crack in the iron sleeve, which may result in either re-sleeving the existing well or the odious task of drilling a new one. And that, my friends, is not a cheap repair either way.
According to a well-drilling guy we talked to, there's a chance it will improve when the water table gets back to normal, but that cannot be a permanent solution regardless. So we're praying that it clears enough for showers and dish cleaning (we have a 3-part filter on the kitchen faucet for drinking water, but we can't even use that until the silt stops flowing), because otherwise it could be several weeks before we have usable water again, as it would take at least that long to get a repair (or new well) completed. There's also a slight chance we can get annexed into the small town we're adjacent to, but that still means at least 800 yards of city water line which have to be laid first, and I am sure we would have to pay for that too. Cylla and Charybdis, right?
This serves as a stark reminder of all the less fortunate around the world who don't have running water, or even access to clean water. It is an inconvenience, and an annoyance, and a huge outlay of money we really don't have in a time when we need to be saving instead of spending, but it could be worse. We have food and shelter. We have friends and family. We have faith and trust in a God who gives us Living Water to drink. And really, do we need anything else?
Still, I ask for prayers for patience, and for a firm reliance on God. Otherwise I might just start crying in frustration, and who likes to see a bawling librarian?
3 comments:
I am so sorry. We will be praying for you.
Bless your heart! (Sorry, that couldn't be avoided!)
We will pray for clean water and an obvious solution.
Thanks for y'all's prayers!
The well break, we discovered, is close to the surface - relatively speaking, anyway - so that the excessively high water table we've had recently due to the rain creeped above the break point. As the water rable recedes, we are slowly getting usable water back into the pipes. Alas, we will still need to fix the problem long-term. But at least this means we can do it at a more reasonable pace, and hopefully when we've saved enough to cover the costs.
God is good!!
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