Up Against A Steel Wall

While up in the bleak frozen north today people shovel snow, here in sunny Florida we frolic in our swimming pools.

That’s what our Chamber of Commerce would have you believe.

They lie.

Yesterday I was in our above-ground pool all day in the midst of a cold drizzling gray all-day, 40 degree rain.

Why was I in the pool on such a miserable day?

Last week, while planting flowers beneath the pool deck, Ginny discovered an aneurysm the size of a soccer ball bulging from the side of the steel pool wall. A place under there had rusted through the 15+ year old pool siding and water pressure ballooned the plastic lining through the resulting hole.

If that balloon ruptures, 7,500 gallons of heavily chlorinated water would tsunami over our deck, flower beds and yard.

Immediately I turned off the pool pump and filter system to keep vibrations to a minimum. Before I could drain the pool into the flower beds, I had to let the chlorine leech out of the water. So of course, green slime algae rampaged through the water in a matter of days.

If — if I can patch the rusted out steel wall, we keep the pool; if my amateur hydraulic engineering fails, we have to remove the pool altogether because it would cost too much to replace it.

Either way it goes, the project requires huge investments of time and energy from me. I dare not let the pool remain as is because the next warm day it would breed mosquitoes.

So… the final stages of writing my history of firefighting in Jacksonville remain halted while I dabble in green slime.

My prayer life hangs fire while I tangle with hoses.

My spiritual reservoir stands as empty as though some aneurysm has ruptured inside me.

And poor Ginny suffers from a terrible cold, too miserable to go to work or to eat much other than the chicken soup I fix her.

This is not a good time for us.

Between nursing her and sloshing around in filthy water while I hope my idea of inserting a baffle between the plastic liner and the steel wall works, I’m drained.

And the Heavens are silent.

Faithful but silent.

I think that this week, while I struggle with this green pool in Florida, my Lord is skiing on the pristine snowy slopes of Aspen.

And, I strongly suspect He’s laughing!