What The Plumber Found

Yesterday I mentioned that my friend Wes brought a young man, Ted, to visit me for the first time. The three of us engaged in a running, free-range conversation as we went out for breakfast then returned to my house.

An incident Ted related fascinated me.

I may not have the details right because our bull session included topics as varied as work schedules, dangerous areas of the city, Bible translation and commentary, rectal exam jokes, Christmas Eve worship services, the sung fit of the waitress’ jeans, how to cook red-eye gravy, divine guidance, bosses without a clue—the typical fellowship conversation of Christian guys.

Remember what Jesus said—Whenever two or three of my guys sit around shooting the bull, I’m right there in the middle of ‘em.

So, I may have garbled details of Ted’s story but I think I heard the gist of it:

Not long ago Ted and a partner worked on an old house in Montana. An elderly woman owned the house. She had a sister who died some years ago.

The house’s old plumbing pipes needed replacing. That involved digging a trench under the house. After they had dug about two feet down, Ted and his co-worker uncovered a sealed packet which had been hidden away for years.

They unwrapped it and discovered that it contained an old diary written by the deceased sister of the homeowner. After work, they took it back to the motel they stayed at and both read it.

Ted says it contained two significant elements:

First, the sister who wrote the hidden diary detailed her promiscuous sexual encounters in vivid images; second, she vented great anger and bitterness against her family, especially the sister who now owns the home.

The diarist said nasty, hurtful, damaging things—dirty things best left hidden in the dirt.

Ted and his partner (whose name I’ve forgotten) debated what to do with the old diary. Ted felt they should keep or destroy it; his co-worker argued that it was the rightful property of the homeowner and they should return it to her.

They flipped a coin.

Next day they gave the woman her dead sister’s old diary.

At first she was delighted. She had not known it existed. But Ted said as she began to read, her face fell. Her eyes teared. The long buried words wounded her.

I wish I had access to that diary. Old diaries fascinate me. I’ve had a life-long thing about old diaries. They give the real-time experiences of ordinary people revealing their thoughts and dreams, the depths of their hearts. Seldom do they touch on “Great” historical events (When I edited and published Samuel Ward’s diary, I found he hardly even mentioned the Spanish Armada!)

I envy Ted the experience of finding a previously undiscovered diary.

But the opportunity for preserving that one is gone forever.

I have kept my own daily (almost) diary for going on 35 years. I frequently address entries to “The Kid In The Attic”, an imaginary teenager who may stumble across my diaries in a dusty cardboard box in his attic on some rainy day fifty or a hundred years from now. I want him to see what the Christian life is like in real-time for one ordinary guy at the turn of the 20^th Century. Maybe he will spot something that will encourage his own dedication to Christ.

But what about hurtful words?

Shouldn’t I clean up my act so I appear an ideal Christian?

No. If my life story is to be real, then I need to be real. I record me as I is. I hide little. I think Christ can stand the test of reality.

I’ve asked my children not to read my diary till after Ginny and I are dead (Save all concerned some embarrassment). And I’ve urged them to never read less than 50 pages at a time. That’s because if they opened to some random page on a day when I happened to be pissed at them, I don’t want them to ever think that is my whole attitude towards them. My peeves pass daily.

Oddly enough, Ginny seldom reads my diary—she sees enough of me in real-time. She knows what I am better than anybody, she doesn’t feel a need to read about it. Of course, my diaries have always been open to her. I’m a glass guy. I intend to live and be transparent.

I want people to see through me to Christ.

In my opinion more people should keep diaries. You know, I know virtually nothing about my own parents. For instance my father lived in the same house all my life. He went to work in the foundry every morning, came home, ate supper, fell asleep in his chair, went to work next day, went fishing some weekends, was once an Eagle Scout…

I have no idea what he thought, what he dreamed, who he loved, what he hated, what he wanted in life. We lived in the same house all my childhood, yet I know virtually nothing about the man.

Even if he’d left hurtful words written somewhere, he would not be such a stranger to me.

Another thought I had about Ted’s experience is what the Jesus said about buried, secret things: “For nothing is secret, that shall not be made manifest; neither any thing hid, that shall not be known and come abroad”.

In another place He said, “There is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hid, that shall not be known. Therefore whatsoever ye have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops”.

St. Paul said something similar, he told Timothy, “Some men's sins are open beforehand, going before to judgment; and some men they follow after .Likewise also the good works of some are manifest beforehand; and they that are otherwise cannot be hid” .

Yeap, good or bad, what we are, what we do, how we live—whether we write it down or not—can not be hidden away out of God’s sight.

Someday a plumber will come digging.