Flashbacks

So I happened to think earlier today of the great Blackwell flood of '05. If you weren't living in Blackwell dorm at Duke University then, you just cannot understand the craziness of having two floors on one wing of the building flood due to a water sprinkler (the ones to stop fires, but not, as one freshman found out, to hang coats on). I was saying to Chris that since we've been dating I feel like I've had really good, regular sleeping habits, since he is not apt to stay up late, and is an early riser, and so I'm usually home and asleep well before midnight. Unlike the night of the flood, when I stayed up ALL night while the rooms that were flooded were left open as their carpets dried.

So here is what ministry...esp. when you're a pastor dating a camp director looks like...sitting in front of your computer at 1 a.m. on a Friday night, using your last bit of waking energy after the water and sewage goes out in two lodges! Yes, that's right. Tonight of all nights. But of course...the night before our marathon of: Saturday day-long marriage workshop, then youth lock in, then Sunday worship, then camp open house. Then...well, hopefully nothing for 24 hours. It's an insane pace, and the call Chris got a period into the hockey game (which he was so happy to be able to sit down and watch) that one of the lodges was having water problems...well, that led to all sorts of commotion including calling Scott, the camp maintenance guy, who called a plumber, who discovered that the problems had (it seems to me having overhead just a bit) nothing to do with the new well being worked on today, and mostly to do with a filter and a sewage pump, and then somehow the pump had to do witha circuit...and well, when I left, it sounded to me like they were going to rig a wire somehow to make it work for now.

This is the stuff they don't teach you in seminary. That moment when you're trying to figure out how the kitchen will serve 3 meals to retreat groups if there's no water, and you can't really help because you've got to lead a marriage workshop (oh, and you're not even married...my mom gets a kick out of that), and you're wondering then if you shoudl just cancel the youth lock-in because you're not sure how many will actually show, and maybe there won't be water anyway. Yep. Thank goodness for working in residence life. When I had dropped off the large containers of drinking water Chris had asked me to, using the house water (and thus well) to fill them, I walked up to him and said hello, and he said, "So there's water everywhere." I didn't realize it was a question, and for a second thought the lodge they were near had flooded. I instantly flashed back to the Blackwell flood (and experience which sadly enough has already come in handy, when my parsonage master bedroom ceiling was leaking water the day I moved in!...I knew just what to do to dry it out and clean up) and I started listing in my head all the supplies we'd need, who to call, and what to do. Fortunately, he was just asking if I'd been able to drop the water off in each building.

Excitement. Life. Always something new, and unexpected! And sometimes sleep-depriving...