Frederick Nietzshe must have been speaking from experience when he said, "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." I had a friend who recently told me that everyone will have trials as difficult as those of the Mormon pioneers who journeyed in covered wagons and handcarts over swamps, Indian territory, and treacherous mountains to get to the Salt Lake Valley. They may have started out as a happy-go-lucky people, but ended up more humble and stalwart in their faith in God.
As my sister came to visit me recently, I noticed a similar change in myself to that of the pioneers. While I began as a giddy girl, many life experiences have changed me for the better.
About the end of January, we had a day that tested our faith with a bad rainstorm. While storms are nothing new to the Houston area, this day was something else. Mid-morning, booming thunder began that we could feel shake the ground followed by bright streaks of lightning crackling in the sky. Then came the torrential rain.
Where we live, there are huge storm drains for the water from the streets to run into, but this time it was raining so hard and fast that the storm drains could not keep up and the streets all around us were flooding. When I looked out the window, I noticed the water had gone over the curb and onto the sidewalk, quickly snaking its way onto our front yard and driveway. As I kept a vigilant watch on the local news, I got more and more nervous. While my husband was home studying for the Bar exam, my children were in school--two in elementary school and one in middle school.
I couldn't help but worry for their safety and desperately wanted to check them all out of school before the weather got any worse. Yet, the weather was so awful and the water was rising so much that I couldn't have gotten out of the driveway even if I wanted to. All I could do was pray until I felt they were all safe and their schools were even safer than my home. Needless to say, after a few hours the storm ceased and the water dried up just in time for the kids to come home.
Then a couple weeks later, as I turned on my kitchen light--a four-bulb florescent--I noticed water leaking from it. Puzzled, I stood on a chair to feel the light and noticed it was wet on the ceiling around it. Trying to not to panic, I called my landlady who immediately sent over a team of plumbers. They told us we had a five-foot piece of pipe that had sprung about five leaks and had to be replaced. Though the repair took a couple days, a foot of drywall on the ceiling near the light ripped due to the water leakage. Now we are awaiting someone to fix that!
A week after the pipe incident, the landlords sent another crew over to fix our sinking foundation. They spent the next week digging holes around our house to put cement pillars under the house to lift it up. The worst part was the day of the jackhammer in the garage that made two big holes. It was so loud we could both hear the ear-splitting sound and feel the vibrations under our feet. It was amazing that my husband got any studying for the Bar exam done at all that week. While it is all fixed now, we still are left with both large and small piles of mud. Hopefully nature will fix it on its own.
It is experiences like these that have helped me evolve from a giddy girl to a responsible adult. When I was a kid, my dad always told me that life had a way of changing people. I never understood what he meant until now. I guess he must have read Nietzshe.
