So the day after the last post, I thought we'd be listing our house, and instead...
from torrential rainstorms after years of drought, the basement flooded!!
I had been anxious about not being ready to list our house earlier--I wondered if we had worked hard enough and been wise enough. And as awful as pulling back carpet, digging out window well gravel, and making trenches was, I could at least be comforted that this WAS, quite literally, as even the insurance companies label it, "an Act of God." But, in my nerdy English way, I kept remembering the term:
de·us ex ma·chi·na
ˌdāəs eks ˈmäkənə,ˌdāəs eks ˈmakənə/
noun
noun: deus ex machina
- an unexpected power or event saving a seemingly hopeless situation, especially as a contrived plot device in a play or novel.
So much for nerdy, I forgot it had such a positive connotation--I just remembered it as intervening in some uncontrollable way. Ironically (on a roll w/ literary vocab!), the flooding DID turn out to be a blessing, and certainly a reminder that, hard though we may work, we are not really the ones in charge.
So, I first felt completely devastated that the timing couldn't be worse, then SO grateful that it hadn't been a day later, making our listing look unstable, and even MORE grateful it hadn't happened AFTER we had gotten a contract!! or the week after someone moved in!! AND that it was a simple drainage problem with our gutters, not a groundwater issue --ALL much worse scenarios. Since then, I have often been frustrated at the not-always-ideal timing of this moving effort, but I have also felt the weight of my lack of knowledge (where is best for our family to live?, who would love our house the most?, what is the best time to move?), so this little flood incident has stuck with me as a tender reminder that God is over all.
