Years ago, we had a leak in our roof. Today, we would fix the problem by whipping out our check book, but back when we were younger (our mid 40’s) we took care of as many problems as we could ourselves. For this chore, the man whom I sleep with (that’s my husband’s term for himself, not mine) needed to climb a ladder to the gutter and crawl up the roof in order to straddle the ridge (uppermost peak) of our house. Our house is situated on a steep hill with the backside built into the hill. The backside of our house appears to be only one story, but from the front side of the house, it’s two stories, and from up there, you can see for miles and miles. A person sitting on the ridge of our house, would be a lot closer to the tree tops than he would be the ground.
Ed is not fond of heights. Ed has been on a few amusement park thrill rides but only for the sake of our son. This death crawl up our steep roof was yet another sacrifice he needed to make. So, Ed girded his loins (mentally speaking) and climbed up the ladder. Will and I were on the ground offering moral support and holding the ladder. The ladder was the easy part. Getting off the ladder and scooting up the steep roof was not, but Ed finally made it to the ridge, sat down straddling the ridge, got himself comfortable and breathed a sigh of relief. He takes a moment to enjoy the view and that’s when it dawned on him that in his anxiety, he forgot to bring his hammer and shingles.
Now, I realize that this should have occurred to his ground crew before he got all the way up to the top. He says that we were too busy laughing at him as he scooted up the roof. Not true. It was really hard not to laugh once the oops was discovered though. I mean, really hard. I truly had empathy for Ed, though, because I’m even more afraid of heights than he is, but I don’t care what you say, it was funny!
I didn’t want him to have to climb down and then back up, so I rigged up what I thought would be a perfect solution. I grabbed what was handy: a lightweight basket, and yarn because, as everyone knows, yarn will not break—not when you’re trying to break it anyway. I put his tools and supplies in the basket, tied one end of the yarn to the handle of the basket, and wrapped the other end of the yarn around a stick. I personally thought my idea was ingenious, but to this day, I don’t believe I’ve ever been given credit for my stroke of brilliance. I managed to throw the stick with the yarn attached up to Ed. Unbelievably (because I’m a terrible thrower), it only took a few tries before Ed managed to catch it. Ed started to pull the basket up and the yarn broke. I fixed it and it broke again. Any knitter can tell you that you cannotbreak yarn when you need to and can’t find your scissors. After several tries, we managed to get the basket up to Ed and he is able to fix the roof. Ed made it safely back down to earth and privately, I tell Will that he is not to tell a soul about what happened.
For the first time ever, I brought up this story the other day to Ed to get his permission to retell it. He now can laugh about it. It has occurred to me that God must get so much amusement out of our blunders. God doesn’t make blunders so he can’t laugh at Himself. But He sure has plenty of opportunities to laugh at us! I thought of something else while retelling this: have you thanked your father and the father of your children for all the sacrifices they have made for you and your children? And I don’t just mean working at a job they didn’t particularly like in order to support the family, but what about riding on those dreaded roller coasters with you since you couldn’t go by yourself, or climbing up on the roof to fix a leak. Thank you Daddy; thank you Ed, for all the sacrifices you made and make for us.