Weakness

Ever wonder what it looks like around our house? Here's a typical view- thick vegetation and jungle: )

There’s never a dull moment here at the camp. The other day our water went out for the millionth time. In case you didn’t know, we get our water from a small plastic pipe (about 1/2" in diameter) that runs about 1km up toward the top of the mountain. This pipe weaves it’s way from the camp, through the jungle, up the mountain and into a small stream near the top. There, the water goes into the pipe and it flows 1km (gravity fed) all the way down the mountain, back through the jungle and into a big water tank that sits at the top of our property. There, it fills up the main tank and then the water is distributed to all the other tanks on the property. That’s it. There's no back-up plan and there's no water company to assist us when the water is out either. 

Here's the view, looking over the tops of the canopies of the trees, high up in the
mountains (at cloud level)- that's where we live.

And the water is constantly going out. Either by the pipe becoming clogged (with sand) where it sits in the creek, by the pipe breaking (do to it becoming brittle because of the elements) somewhere along the 1km route it travels on it's way to the property or by air getting into the line. When the latter happens you have to follow the pipe and, by the process of elimination, disconnect every connection/fitting until you figure out where the air is. Then you have to bleed the line so that the water can make it’s way, once again, to the camp. The funny thing (funny ironic-not funny haha) is that it usually happens at night. So most of the troubleshooting and repairs are done in pitch black darkness. Awesome, huh?

 Well, the other day, our water was out so I asked Kevin (Maryssa’s boyfriend) to ride the motorcycle up to the main tank to make sure that water was flowing into it. When he got back from checking it he handed me his phone and this is the picture that was on it.

???

What the heck!?

One of the churches that we do camps with had donated 2 large water tanks to us last year to try and help us out with our water problems. Water outages is one of the biggest issues we have- next to 1,000 different types of spiders, poisonous snakes, jungle cats, rats, bats, porcupine attacks, deadly mosquitos, sweltering heat, flooding and constant power outages, that is: )

Anyway, they gave us these 2 large fibreglass tanks. One was 3,000 litres (approximately 792 gallons) and one was 5,000 litres (approximately 1,321 gallons). They were both used and had cracks, but they made the repairs to them before they brought them out to the camp. Well, after only a couple of months the 3,000 litre tank sprang a leak. We tried to repair it but it just sprang a bigger leak so we decided to just ‘punt' on that tank. It supplied water to the 2 upper bunkhouses and was only used during camps anyway, so no biggie. We had an extra 250 litre plastic tank just sitting around so we just put that in it’s place. No problem.

But the 5,000 litre tank, that they gave us, was our main reserve of water for the whole camp. Without it we had no way of feeding all the other tanks on the property. So back to the picture… Our main water tank looked like someone had detonated a stick of dynamite in it or something. What in the world happened?

After closer examination we saw that what had happened was this… the place where the repair was made (the weakness), with that much water constantly pushing against it, eventually just gave way and burst. Causing all 5,000 litres of water to rush down the hill and left us with nothing but a partial shell of a tank and no water on the property: (

So, long-story-short, we had to go out and buy a new tank so that we could restore the water and actually function again. You don’t realize how ‘not’ having water totally paralyses you and how much you really can’t live without it until you don’t have it (water). Anyway, the new tank is installed now. It’s smaller but it’s plastic and should last us for years: )

But, now that it’s all said and done, I guess there’s a lesson in this whole thing too… "If something is gonna break, it’s probably gonna happen where the weakness is.” 

Just because we fix something in our lives (aka- make a repair) whether it's something spiritually, emotionally, relationally, financially, physically, maritally, etc., we can’t just neglect that area by thinking that it’s gonna be OK forever. We need to pay attention to that area and be aware that if something’s gonna go wrong it'll more than likely be there (in the area that we already fixed). Because even though it’s fixed, it could possibly still be vulnerable.

That’s hard for my personality. I tend to look at life like a punch list (or a check list). I have this list. And I’m constantly going through my list and knocking-out tasks. And as soon as the task is completed (or conquered) I move on to the next item. But I can’t look at everything in life like that. For some things I need to be preventative rather than just curative. Proactive rather than reactive. Observing rather than oblivious. Because there are some areas in life that need to be constantly maintained. We can’t just fix something once and yell out, “next!”- thinking that it'll never need our attention again. Everything doesn't work that way.

What about you? Could there possibly be areas in your life that you’ve already worked on that you need to go back (and look at) to make sure that the repair is still good? Or do you just keep moving through life until it (whatever ‘it' is) explodes and leaves you in a real mess? I guess it’s something to think about.

Love Ya,

Jim