It is well...

We had a recent plumbing incident at our house. I was cleaning up after our spaghetti dinner on a Friday evening when the disposal died. I tried all the usual fixes- including pressing the reset button, but nothing happened. Fortunately, the sink was still draining- so I called our trusty plumbing service and made an appointment for Monday. Monday morning rolled around and I thought I would just flick the disposal switch to see what would happen… Voila! The disposal worked just fine (or so it seemed…) and I canceled the appointment.

Fast forward to the next day- I was running off to my weekly Tuesday am Bible study and started the dishwasher before dashing out the door. I returned home in the afternoon to discover a greasy ring in my sink. I ran the water- again, everything seemed OK. I figured that it was just a fluke and went ahead and cleaned the sink. (In hindsight- this is probably the part where I should have gotten a clue that there was indeed a problem!) Later that afternoon I turned the faucet on and heard a strange “waterfall” sound coming from under the sink. I opened the cupboard to discover a mini-disaster of flooding water and partially-ground spaghetti sprayed over every surface in the cupboard! I called my husband who was on his way home from coaching soccer practice with the “You need to come right home!” message and left for Albertsons to purchase mass quantities of paper towels.

As I drove to the store (and let’s be honest here, I was not exactly in a calm, happy mood!) I had my iPod on in the car and the Jars of Clay album that I had recently downloaded came on. As It Is Well With My Soul played the circumstances under which the song was written flashed in my mind… I remembered hearing that the hymn was penned by Horatio Spafford in memory of his four daughters who perished at sea, when the ship on which they were sailing sank in the mid-Atlantic. Spafford's wife, Anna, who was traveling to England along with her daughters, sent a telegram to her husband after being rescued. It simply read, "Survived alone".

Suddenly my “crisis” was put in perspective… Yes, it was a big mess (which my dear husband cleaned up) and it cost us several hundred dollars to fix the broken pipe and clear out the spaghetti clog. But in the scheme of the eternal, it wasn’t even a blip on the screen…


When peace like a river, attendeth my way
When sorrows like sea billows roll,
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say,
It is well, it is well with my soul…